is that it seems to belong to one of gentle manners and agreeable character, and all those who will see the touching description of his country retreat will wish to live there with him.”22 And the weekly Affiches pointedly praised the Essay’s refreshing didactic style and serious tone, which did not harm its grace.23 Hirschfeld paid Watelet the complement of including large sections of the Essay in his Theorie der Gartenkunst, as well as freely adapting a good bit of its theory. And in a measure of how influential Watelet’s book would become—and by extension that of picturesque theory in general—Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières dedicated his book Le Génie de l’architecture; ou, l’Analogie de cet art avec nos sensations (The Genius of Architecture; or, The Analogy of that Art with Our Sensations, 1780) to Watelet. Le Camus praised Watelet’s sensitivity, vision, and delicate touch.24
To assess the Essay fully, we must recall that it was intended as part of a general study of taste that Watelet left incomplete at the time of his death. Thus, although it can be read as an autonomous work, the book does not present a fully formulated, coherent theory. Nevertheless, it sufficiently established the aims and methods of the French picturesque, and argued—politely, yet forcefully—for the inclusion of landscape gardening among the liberal arts. The point was not moot. Although gardening had always been appreciated, it held a somewhat stepchild status in the hierarchy of the fine arts. Thomas Whately took up the gauntlet in the opening sentence of his Observations: “Gardening, in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts.” Watelet seconded the Englishman directly—“my subject is related to the liberal arts”—but broadens the discussion. He distinguishes between the mechanical and liberal arts—a polarity evident throughout the book—and reflects on the driving forces and consequences of their production. And he introduces a related polarity, that of the potential of art to be both useful and agreeable—something ideally suited to the picturesque garden. Believing that the gardens had reached offensive extremes of excess through artificial means (fueled by money and industry), Watelet opines for a return to a simpler garden more in line with nature; one that relies on nature alone, rather than artful (mechanical) contrivances. As he wrote in his article on “art” in the Encyclopédie des beaux-arts, only the liberal arts could create sensations that satisfied the soul.25 Thus the garden, whose metaphysical goal was spiritual satisfaction, could fulfill its duty only with a return to the libéral.
It is important to remember that Watelet was writing in an Enlightenment atmosphere greatly influenced by the writings of Rousseau, whom Watelet knew. In our postmodern, postindustrial world, it is hard to appreciate the importance the eighteenth century gave to art as a moral and edifying force in civilization. Such an aesthetic discourse—which dates from antiquity—is, one might say, the metanarrative of Watelet’s Essay. The corollary argument is the corruption of the arts by the very civilization that nurtures and sustains them. The immediate source of this chain of thought was very local: Rousseau’s Discours sur les sciences et les arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts) of 1750, and the more important Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Origins and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men) of 1755. In the first discourse, Rousseau warns of the corrupting effects of luxury and idleness; in the second he paints a broader canvas, calling to task civilization itself. These seminal works of Enlightenment political and social philosophy established the discourse of nature as a norm, which would sanction the claim for the moral authority, if not superiority, of rural living. Implicit in Rousseau’s philosophy is the idea that a return to nature is a return to origins. Rousseau would again address these themes in his novels Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), and Emile, ou, de l’éducation (1762). Watelet is not as radical a thinker, but Rousseau’s thought pervades the Essay. Watelet heeds Rousseau’s message of the corrupting tendency of cities (“laboratories [of] artificial pleasures”) and praises the purer virtues of country living. In his social interpretation of landscape design, the garden—as the space of mediation between nature and art—becomes for Watelet the locus of moral restitution of the human mind, body, and spirit. While the peaceful bliss of country living was in reality an impossible ideal for people obsessed with fashion, taste, and social hierarchy,26 the decorum of a polite society transposed to the country held wide appeal.27
As a didactic work, the Essay is ostensibly about the creation of landscape garden archetypes of differing scenes. This is not at all surprising coming from an academic painter whose other written works are preoccupied with generic categories. In his Art de peindre of 1760, two of the four songs are devoted to picturesque and poetic compositions. In his Dictionnaire article on landscape painting, he distinguishes among several landscape prototypes, with a clear preference for ideal representations, as they more than any other require the most artistic genius, skill, and imagination.28 In the Essay, Watelet presents a set of landscape styles—the picturesque (pittoresque), the poetic (poétique), and the romantic (romanesque)—to which the designer has recourse in the creation of gardens. Watelet ascribes individual characters to each category, which can be further inflected into any number of nuances through the use of the elements of nature and artistic constructions. A judicious selection of an initial genre with designed modifications and adjustments results in innumerable scenes, each with a particular effect on the senses. Moreover, a combination of generic scenes can provide for a changing tableau—not unlike scenes in a theater, to which he makes reference—and thus further heightens sensations. Though his treatment of all genres is evenhanded, he is evidently partial to a picturesque pastoral—elaborated in the last chapter, entitled “The French Garden,” which is otherwise a description of Moulin Joli. With its working mill, shepherds, fisherman, and overt rusticity, the country retreat approaches a modern ferme ornée (embellished farm) whose combination of the agreeable with the useful is not only felicitous but morally worthy.
The chapter on Moulin Joli has a not so subtle nationalist motive. Although the chapter is intended to present a summary of the precepts and theory described in the book, and to give a virtual notion of a French picturesque garden, its title, “The French Garden,” is not neutral. Consider that the penultimate chapter of the book is devoted to a description of a Chinese garden. Watelet includes the chapter as a sincere appreciation of presumed Chinese garden design (he never traveled to China and is relying on a description of others), yet in doing so he presents a recognizable challenge to England’s authorship of the garden style that bears its name. Earlier in the book Watelet had already planted the doubt: “And this nation [England], it is said, borrowed the ideas for its own gardens from the Chinese.” Here Watelet is participating in what was to become a long tradition of French historiography of garden design—begun by Latapie—where nationalism plays a role in designating authorship. For example, the French were quick to modify the designation “English garden” to jardin anglo-chinois. Appending the Sino adjective to the English garden not only deprives the English of their unique contribution, but in time the hyphenated style took on pejorative connotations, at least among the French. Thus Watelet’s consecutive placement of Chinese and “French” garden descriptions may be understood as a genteel prejudicing of the former in preference for the later. While readers can draw their own conclusions, there is no doubt of Watelet’s preference and opinion: no Chinese (read English) gardens for France.29
A number of significant points in Watelet’s treatise are worth noting that might otherwise be subsumed in a discussion of genre. For example, though he writes “among the known arts, the one whose ideas are most closely related to the art of gardens is that of painting,” his purpose is to demonstrate their difference. In the chapter on “Modern Parks,” which is devoted to a discussion of the picturesque genre, he pointedly distinguishes picturesque garden design as a separate artistic enterprise, independent from its namesake art. The designer of landscape gardens, whom he refers to as a décorateur (decorator), may emulate picturesque compositions, but a landscape garden is inherently different. Whereas painting accords only one view, the “person viewing picturesque scenes in a park, on the contrary, changes their organization by changing his
