Achille Duchêne and the spectacle of the gardens

Description

Author : Bénédicte Gady
Curator at the Museum of Decorative Arts, Department of Graphic Arts

The landscape gardeners Henri (1841-1902) and Achille Duchêne (1866-1947) were entrusted, throughout the world, with the renovation of the gardens of numerous castles of the Grand Siècle and the design of those of rich modern neo-style residences.
After the First World War, Achille emancipated himself from his role as "gardener to princes" and explored other possibilities, between collective projects with a social vocation and pure reveries dictated by his fertile imagination. With great theatricality, his drawings of Dream Gardens and Gardens of the Future plunge us into a phantasmagorical universe not devoid of humor. This album presents a selection of the most beautiful leaves among the one hundred and thirty-six offered by the widow of Achille Duchêne to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.