Dezallier d'Argenville

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The family of Dezallier d'Argenville produced several writers and connoisseurs in the course of the eighteenth century.

Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (Paris, 1 July 1680–29 November 1765, avocat to the Parlement de Paris and secretary to the king, was a connoisseur of gardening who laid out two for himself and his family, before writing La théorie et la pratique du jardinage (published anonymously, 1709; second edition, 1713), based on his experience and his reading^[1]. The majority of the illustrations were by Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond, who was credited as the author in the third edition, 1722^[2]. As the work of a gentleman rather than a gardener, as previous French books on gardening had all been, Dezallier d'Argenville's work was laid out like a treatise of architecture, addressed as much to the architect and the patron as to the practicing gardener. As its title suggests, the treatise is composed of two parts: the theoretical principles of the art of fine gardening and its practical applications. The first section considers the principles of siting the maison de plaisance relative to its gardens, techniques of laying out geometric figures in parterres, avenues and formal tree plantations (bosquets), and the planning of garden pavilions and the siting of sculpture, an essential element in the jardin français. The second part applies the principles in earth works, terraces and stairs, and the hydraulics necessary for constructing jeux d'eau: fountains, cascades, pools (bassins) and canals.

His rational principles could adapt formal parterre gardening to the simplified programs available to the upper middle class^[3], which accounts for the immense popularity of his book, which is the central document in the eighteenth century formal garden in the wake of André Le Nôtre. The work went through thirteen editions in France^[4], where the English mode of landscape design scarcely made itself known before the French Revolution. It was published in a German version^[5] and translated into English by the architect John James, as The Theory and Practice of Gardening (1712, with a 2nd edition in 1728, and a 3rd edition in 1743, when the English landscape garden, might have seemed to make its formal designs passé.) Dezallier d'Argenville's Théorique in its English version introduced the Ha-ha, the invisible fence, to English practice.

Dezailller d'Argenville was called upon to edit or contribute more than 600 entries in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, published in parts from 1751.

Dezallier d'Argenville's interest in natural history resulted in two treatises, on shells and minerals, L'histoire naturelle éclaircie dans deux de ses parties principales, la lithologie et la conchyliologie. (Paris 1742) La Conchyliologie, ou Traité sur la nature des coquillages 1757 etc.. The connoisseurship of shells and their most colorful and fantastic form was a gentleman's occupation and a worthy inclusion in a cabinet de curiosités before it became a science under the Linnaean system of classification.

His son, also Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d'Argenville (died 1794), was the anonymous author ("M.D.") of Voyage Pictoresque de Paris; ou Indication de tout ce qu'il y a de plus beau dans cette grande Ville en Peinture, Sculpture, & Architecture. (Paris, 1749, fourth edition 1754), a connoisseur's guide to the chief artistic and architectural monuments of Paris, with accounts of the leading academic and scientific organizations of the city. At least seven further editions appeared before the Revolution.

Further works were Dénombrement de tous les fossiles de France and L'Oryctologie ou Traité des pierres, des minéraux et autres fossiles.

Antoine-Nicolas Dezallier d'Argenville compiled the Vies des Fameux Architectes Depuis la renaissance des Arts in two volumes, 1787, of which the second was devoted to sculptors. An abridged edition (Abrégé de la vie...) was often reprinted. A facsimile was published in Geneva 1972.

[edit] Notes

^ Full title: La theorie et la pratique du jardinage. Ou l'on traite à fond des beaux jardins appellés communément les jardins de propreté, comme sont les parterres, les bosquets, les boulingrins, &c. Contenant plusieurs plans et dispositions generales de jardins; nouveaux desseins…& autres ornemens servant à la décoration & embélissement des jardins. Avec la manière de dresser un terrain… His remark "A fine garden being no less difficult to contrive and order well than a good building" suggests that he had read Francis Bacon's essay "Of gardening".
^ Gerda Gollwitzer, "The influence of Le Nostre" in The French Formal Garden, 1974, Elizabeth B. MacDougall and F. Hamilton Hazlehurst, editors (Dumbarton Oaks)
^ Previous books on gardening had presented only the grandest royal and aristocratic projects.
^ And unauthorized reprints from The Hague
^ Die Gärtnerey sowohl in ihre Theorie oder Betrachtung, als Praxi oder Übung, translated by Frantz Anton Danreitter, gardener to the archbishop of Salzburg (Gollwitzer, p. 74).