Main Content
Summary
Author: (Girardin, Stanislas, Comte de)
Title: Promenade ou itinéraire des jardins d’Ermenonville, auquel on a joint vingt-cinq de leurs principales vues, dessinées et gravées par J.Merigot fils.
Publication: Paris, Merigot (and others) 1811.
Price: £895
Reference: 09014
Full Description
8vo. (4) + 63 + (1)pp, 25 aquatint plates (numbered 0,1-24), 2 engr plates of music. Early twentieth century quarter cloth, marbled boards. Booklabel of Nigel Temple. An engraving of the tomb of Rousseau from the London Magazine, May 1779, loosely inserted. A good, clean copy of a book that often turns up browned.
The garden created at Ermenonville between 1769 and 1778 by René, Marquis de Girardin, was the definitive romantic garden of its period, landscaped in the English manner under the supervision of the Marquis’s Scottish-born gardener but incorporating buildings and other features redolent of the French enlightenment. Girardin had been one of the closest friends of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Rousseau had actually been buried on the Isle des Peupliers within the garden, his tomb becoming a place of pilgrimage for admirers from all over Europe. This description of the garden, written by the Marquis René’s son, first appeared in 1788, and this is an unchanged reissue, utilising the same handsome aquatint plates as the first edition. No copy of the reissue is listed in NUC.