the notion of movement, something not possible in painting. Moreover, while moving through a picturesque garden, the visitor is at liberty to experience it as he or she wishes, and thus is unconstrained by the intentions of the designer.
Watelet’s conception of movement is essential to enhancing the effects he wishes to create in the garden, but is also key to his appreciation of the dynamics of space and time in picturesque garden design. He recognizes that the design of landscapes requires an understanding of the simultaneous and mutual dependence of topographic variations of “perspectives, clearings, and elevations” with the “relations and proportions between vacant and occupied space.” Indeed, Watelet is the only picturesque theorist to include a chapter on space. Furthermore, he notes that in gardening, the vegetative cover of the earth—trees, shrubs, grass—as well as the natural movements of wind, clouds, water, trees, and so on, are integral to the conception. Thus Watelet combines the dimensions of space and time to fashion a sophisticated, time-dependent, three-dimensional theory of picturesque garden composition.
In the chapter entitled “Pleasure Gardens,” Watelet continues the important discussion of movement when distinguishing between architecture and gardening, noting the different aims and objectives of each. His qualification that “until now” the architect was the traditional designer of gardens is a direct challenge to architectural practice. But the seizure of garden design from the architect is based on well-argued, theoretical grounds. Architecture is essentially a static building practice, concerned with the immediate and stationary, and restricted to one time and one place. It requires regularity and symmetry for clarity. Picturesque gardening is the antithesis of architecture; it overcomes the inertia of architectural stasis through direct engagement in space and time. Movement is the key to the garden theory of Watelet: “Movement, that very spirit of nature, that inexhaustible source of the interest she inspires.”
Watelet also engages topical aesthetic debates dealing with association theory and artistic mimesis or imitation in his discussion of the poetic and romantic garden genres. The poetic, which draws from “mythologies and . . . ancient or foreign practices and customs,” and the romantic, whose actions are “more vague, more personal,” require imagination and invention to set in motion an association of ideas to recall a certain time, place, climate, and story. As such, these genres draw most heavily from learning or individual experience. But they are also the genres most open to the abuse of artificial or foreign effects, such as fabriques (architectural follies) and other contrivances that suggest “tales of fiction and fairyland.” All these devices are implicated in the theory of association, which Watelet hints at but never fully develops. Nevertheless, Watelet, more in line with the Englishman Whately than his own countryman Carmontelle, reproves emblematic devices and warns of the “errors of taste” that distort the imagination.30
Related to association was the theory of artistic mimesis. At issue is the degree to which Art should lord over Nature in the creation of the garden. The argument was an area of fundamental contention among the garden theorists and was not confined to national boundaries. For some, like Chambers and Carmontelle, nature was too paltry and uninteresting on its own ever to be pleasing and effective at moving the soul; nature needed improving. Whately held the opposite view. Morel agreed with Whately on the need to temper artifice in the garden, but went even further: he removed landscape gardening from the imitative arts, something seconded by the French academician Antoine Quatremère de Quincy.31 Watelet took somewhat of a middle ground. He allowed for pastoral and rural imagery, but shunned artificiality and foreign influences, although he constructed a Chinese bridge at Moulin Joli. Such contradictions were standard fare and detract little from his essential point that “the nature of the terrain is of primary importance in determining the character of a garden scene,” and that the accompanying elements of nature alone were sufficient to create a spectrum of moods necessary to arouse the soul. Though he tacitly accepts that gardening is an art of manipulation, the key to a successful picturesque garden is to balance the equation between artifice and nature. His dictum is “[come] as close as possible to artifice, while abandoning nature as little as possible,” and the inevitable conclusion follows a few pages latter: “Any art that shows itself too clearly destroys the effect of Art.”
It is important to note that Watelet’s discussion of garden genres and aesthetic debates contains the overarching metaphysical argument of the Essay, and indeed of all picturesque garden theory: the affective powers of inanimate objects, whether natural or otherwise, to stir the senses and move the soul. Thus the discussion of landscape genres is about creating landscapes of different characters, which can elicit different emotional responses from terror to delight, pain to sensual pleasure. Recognizing the practical and sensible wants of man, Watelet’s conception of the picturesque garden appealed to both body and spirit, and in the process combined material satisfaction with spiritual enlightenment.32
With these precepts, Watelet is operating wholly within the realm of philosophical empiricism, which had a dramatic impact on all picturesque theory. No doubt, Watelet’s education and association with Enlightenment society colored, if not instigated, his explicit acceptance of the mechanisms of empirical sensationalism. In all probability, his direct source was the Abbé Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Locke’s disciple in France. Condillac’s Traité des sensations (Treatise on the Sensations, 1754), which preceded Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) by three years, and its French translation by a decade, was undoubtedly known to Watelet. Condillac’s influence is evident in Watelet’s early poem, L’Art de peindre, in which he explores the activation of the senses through art. Otherwise lost in a sentimental verse—“the artist must paint with his soul”—Watelet includes unmistakable sensationalist tropes. For example, in Song Four he recalls human passions of pleasure and pain, love and hate—the binary toggle switches Condillac uses to bring his famous statue to life:
What the senses, when aroused, contribute to the passions,
The soul returns to the senses by the way it expresses them.
Joy and sadness, pleasure and pain,
Excite every nerve, flow through every vein.
Desire and love, hatred and anger,
Each has its own traits, its look, its gestures, and its colors.33
Watelet introduces such sensationalist writing into his Essay almost from the start: “we wish not only that both the materials of artistic creations and their uses bring pleasure to the senses, but also that the mind and soul in turn be touched and stirred by their appeal.” Although he does not call attention to the empiricist heritage, it is safe to say that the society to which his Essay is addressed was well informed on the sources of his metaphysical inspiration. The importance of this heritage should not be underestimated or overlooked, as it greatly influenced subsequent picturesque garden theory and, perhaps more important, provided the theoretical means for designing gardens independent of previous practice. It is no exaggeration to say that with Watelet’s sensationalist based picturesque garden theory, gardening in France had entered a new era.
Watelet concludes his Essay on Gardens with a “letter to a friend.” It is a charming description of a garden he knows intimately—Moulin Joli. It is artfully rendered with a delicateness and refinement so befitting the era. He paints a gentle picture—more watercolor than oil—of a setting for a civil and hospitable society lived in rural bliss. Yet there is something disquieting, if not sad, in Watelet’s nostalgic description of his beloved island retreat. The site seems a passive landscape, one long neglected. Three river islands made of mud and earth, with no stone quays, no harsh or hard-edged embankments. The bridges are wood and wobbly, the footpaths earthen. The air is fresh and cool. Muted birdsong, gentle murmurs of a languid Seine, Boucher-toned milkmaids, wood nymphs, and a population of real and imaginary citizens inhabit this paradise. But the season is late. The river is low. The trees are old and full, the air at
