Jean CHAUFOURIER (1679-1757), Atelier de Suite of eight plans of the garden of Versailles, representing : - General plan of the château and garden of Versailles - Plan du château, du parterre d'Eau, du parterre du Nord, du parterre du Midy - Plan of the Orangerie - Plan of the Bosquet - Plan of the Théâtre d'Eau - Plan of the Salle du Bal - Map of the Bassin d'Apollon Pencil, pen, wash and watercolor on hollande paper, titled and sometimes annotated. First third of the 18th century. (4) Height 49.5 Width 60 cm (as seen) (4) Height 47 Width 66 cm (when viewed) Provenance: Former collection of Jean-François de Pontac (1715-1788), then his descendants. We would like to thank Mr. Christophe Morin, Senior Lecturer at the University of Tours, for examining these plans and for the information he kindly provided. REMAINS OF THE GARDENS OF LE NÔTRE AT VERSAILLES This suite of eight plans belongs to the workshop of Jean Chaufourier, a draughtsman working for the King's Buildings Department under the direction of the Duc d'Antin. Son of an officer of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, trained in perspective drawing, topography and etching, Jean Chaufourier worked from 1710-1720 for the administration of the Bâtiments du Roi, under the authority of Louis-Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Duc d'Antin, Director General of the Bâtiments du Roi since 1708. He was admitted to the Académie in 1735. In 1720, five years after the death of Louis XIV, the Duc d'Antin produced a precious compendium of the state of the gardens at Versailles at the end of the great period of creation led for almost forty years by Louis XIV and André Le Nôtre. This was a decisive moment: before the great simplifications of the following decades, bosquets, parterres and hydraulic systems still retained the richness and complexity inherited from the Grand Siècle. Our set of eight plans relating to the organization of the gardens of Versailles is similar to the album executed under this authority, now preserved at the Château de Versailles (Coll. Grosseuvre, no. 5, Inv. Vms 64, donated by the Société des Amis de Versailles, 1934), comprising twenty-two double and four single plates, preceded by a general plan dated 1720. This collection of Plans des château et jardins de Versailles belongs to a series of large albums now dispersed. Our eight sheets offer a stricter vision than the plans usually preserved for Versailles, a vision characteristic of Chaufourier's style. In his Abecedario, Pierre-Jean Mariette is very critical of Chaufourier's style, criticizing it for "not being very effective" and perhaps attributing it to the influence of Sébastien Leclerc, whom he studied in his youth. As for our series, Pierre Arizzoli-Clémentel observes that in the Duc d'Antin's commission : "Curiously, while this impressed visitors so much, the two main axes of perspective from the château are excluded from the drawing, in favor of a closer view: neither the canal, nor the pièce d'eau des Suisses, a fortiori neither Trianon, nor the Menagerie on the perpendicular axes, nor the water cycle, nor the sun cycle, as Erik Orsenna has written, are here taken into account, or highlighted. The designer has not strayed from the idea of planes, sacrificing only a little perspective in the depiction of water jets, sprays and broths, but not for the sculpted décor, the location of which is only indicated by small dark squares, as the album includes no views." Our watercolor series is indeed very similar to, but less developed than, the plates preserved at Versailles: the treatment of vegetation is absent or reduced, the trees are not depicted or simply indicated, and the emphasis is on the geometric structure of the parterres, bosquets and water features. These features are reminiscent of work in progress, or of studio adjustments, prior to or parallel to the more accomplished versions that have survived, and bear witness to the workings of the draftsmen's workshops attached to the Bâtiments du Roi. Bibliography : - Pierre ARIZZOLI-CLÉMONTEL, Les Jardins de Le Nôtre à Versailles. Plans De Jean Chaufourier. Alain de Gourcuff, 2001, p. 9 to 19.