Enfilade

 Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Vue du parc d’Arcueil
(Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN – Grand Palais / Suzanne Nagy)

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From The Louvre:

In Arcueil’s Leafy Groves: Drawing an 18th-Century Garden
À l’ombre des frondaisons d’Arcueil: Dessiner un jardin du 18e siècle
Musée du Louvre, Paris, 24 March — 20 June 2016

Curated by Xavier Salmon

The Arcueil domain knew its golden age in the early 18th century. Situated near the aqueduct built for Marie de Medici between 1614 and 1624, the château was surrounded by a vast garden that included flowerbeds, woodland, covered galleries, and stairs. After the death of the Prince de Guise, the domain found a new owner, whose heirs subdivided it. When it was sold in 1752, the château and its grounds were razed under circumstances that remain unclear. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, the town of Arcueil sprang up around the aqueduct; of this substantial estate, with its sumptuous gardens and numerous outbuildings, only a few fragments now remain. Nonetheless, the memory of this historic site lives on in landscape drawings of Arcueil made by various artists in the 1740s. The goal of the exhibition is to present virtually all of these drawings for the first time.