Désert de Retz

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For the novel by Jules Roy, see Le Désert de Retz (novel).

The désert de Retz is an Anglo-Chinois landscape garden - or folly - created on the edge of the forêt de Marly in the commune of Chambourcy. It was built at the end of the 18th century by the aristocrat François Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville on his 40 hectare estate. It is notable for the construction of 17 (or 20) buildings, of which only 10 still survive, refering to classical antiquity or in an exotic style, including a summer house in the form of a section of a truncated and ruined column, an icehouse in the form of an Egyptian pyramid, an obelisk, a temple dedicated to Pan, and a (now-lost) Chinese pavilion.

1 History
2 Structures
3 Famous visitors
4 Bibliography
5 External links

[edit] History

In 1774 Monville bought the house, its service quarters and an estate of about 13 hectares from Antoine Joseph Basire, and then extended the estate to 90 arpents (38 ha 80 a and 8 ca) by 1785. In July 1792, Monville sold the Désert and his two hôtels in Paris to the Englishman Lewis Disney Ffytche and as the property of an English subject these were seized and sold in 1793 on the outbreak of the War of the First Coalition. En 1811, Lebigre Beaurepaire bought the Désert, but he did not honour his debts and the estate was again seized and in 1816 sold back to Disney Ffytche after the Bourbon Restoration. Ffytche's grandson Auguste Guilaume Hilary took possession in 1824 and sold it in 1827 to a notary of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Maître Alexandre Marie Denis. Denis sold it in 1839 to Jean-François Bayard, a nephew of Eugène Scribe.

In 1856, Jean-François Bayard's widow ceded it to Frédéric Passy (1822-1912) and his son Pierre (born on the estate) added a hen farm but in 1936 was forced to sell the estate due to financial difficulties, with the buyer being Georges Courtois. Courtois bought into via par a société named Neueberg. When he realised how much work was needed to restore the Désert (now nearly in ruins), the new owner decided not to do so, though the architect Jean-Charles Moreux bemoaned its ruined state. It was decided to list the estate and its buildings on 9 December 1938, resulting in a decree signed on 30 August 1939 and published 25 November 1939. However, the société owning it changed the statutes, forcing the authorities to resume the procedure to have the Désert finally classed as a monument historique, which came with a decree of9 April 1941 against the owners' wishes. On 8 December 1966 André Malraux, then minister of culture, strongly evoked the estate's state before the Assemblée Nationale l’état du domaine and had them vote for the law of 30 December 1966, which allowed the Désert to be saved. The principal of this law was to force a building's owner to pay 50% of the cost of the work. On the 31 December 1981 the Worms group bought the Désert and gave it to the Société Civile du Désert de Retz.

Part of the former estate has since 1992 been occupied by the Joyenval golf course.

[edit] Structures

The 1785 plan in de Monville's hand mentions:

The ruined column
Rock at the entrance to the garden
Temple to the God Pan
Ruined Gothic church
Chinese house
Dairy
a "Métairie arrangée"
Hermitage
Orangery
"Isle du Bonheur" (Isle of Happiness)
Greenhouses
a "Chaumière" or thatched cottage
Tomb
Pyramid icehouse
Obelisk
"Communs"
open-air theatre

To this list may be added

The Tartar tent
The temple of repose
The little altar

[edit] Famous visitors

The garden was visited around the time of its creation by Gustav III of Sweden (to whom Monville offered some drawings) as well as the prince de Ligne, the duc de Chartres and Thomas Jefferson (who inspired the ruined column). Later visitors included Colette and André Breton.

[edit] Bibliography

Louis-Eugène Lefevre, Le Jardin anglais et la singulière habitation du Désert de Retz près de Marly, Paris éd. Jean Schemit, 1917, tiré à part du Bulletin de la Commission des Antiquités et des Arts de Seine-et-Oise.
Pierre-Émile Renard, Chambourcy, son passé, 1980
Pierre-Émile Renard, Chambourcy et le Désert de Retz, 1984
Michel Dach, Le Désert de Retz à la lumière d’un angle particulier, 1995
Le Désert de Retz, texte anonyme publié en avril 1988 par la Société Civile du Désert de Retz, Croissy sur Seine.
Julien Cendres, Chloé Radiguet, Le Désert de Retz, paysage choisi, éd. Stock, 1997 ISBN 2234048214