LE ROUGE, Georges-Louis (1712-c1790) [Détail des nouveaux ja...

Lot 158
27.01.2021 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 15 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 479228
Lot 158 | LE ROUGE, Georges-Louis (1712-c1790) [Détail des nouveaux ja...
Estimate value
$ 15 000 – 25 000
LE ROUGE, Georges-Louis (1712-c.1790). [Détail des nouveaux jardins à la mode. Paris: Chez Le Rouge, 1776-87.]

Nearly complete copy, in original condition, of “an exceptional document on the art of the 18th century garden, a source of the highest order for historians”(J.-N. Jeanneney, in Royet, p. 9). Georges-Louis Le Rouge, engineer and geographer to Louis XV and XVI, began issuing this work devoted to European and Chinese gardens in 1776, publishing parts (cahiers) periodically over the next several years; the final cahier XXI appeared in 1789. The entire series of 21 parts, each individually titled, comprise nearly 500 engravings, most in oblong folio format, with numerous folded and double-paged plates. Included are plans and views of the gardens of Stowe, Kew, Blair Atholl, Buckingham, Richmond, Chiswick, Esher, Claremont, Windsor, and Wilton; of Roissy, Saint-James at Neuilly, the Trianon, Marly and Désert de Retz in France and other gardens in and around Paris; and of Sanssouci, Schwetzingen, Steinfurt and Würzburg in Germany and Oranienbaum Palace in Russia.

Of great historical importance are Le Rouge’s detailed plans for gardens that have not survived or that have undergone considerable alterations since the 18th century. Le Rouge drew inspiration from several sources, including theoretical works and garden design manuals by Thomas Collins Overton, William Wrighte, and William Chambers, whose Designs of Chinese buildings (London, 1757) appears as cahier V in a French translation. A partial table of contents for the entire work appears at the end of cahier XII. The last complete set of Le Rouge’s work sold at Christie’s London on 9 December 1983; much more common at auction are individual parts or plates. Berlin Katalog 3312 (citing 19 cahiers); Inventaire du fonds français, Graveurs du XVIIIe siècle XV:56-72; see Veronique Royet et al., Le Rouge: Les Jardins anglo-chinois (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2004) (citing 491 plates on p. 78).

20 parts in one quarto (278 x 225mm) and nine oblong folios (most approx. 315 x 470mm). 484 engraved plates (of 491 or 492 in all 21 parts), many folded or double-page; lacking final cahier XXI and its six plates (several plates loose, with small splits along sewing in gutter; occasional soiling, spotting, light dampstaining, marginal creases, and small marginal tears). Contemporary sugar paper over pasteboard or contemporary blue paper wrappers, mostly uncut (extremities worn; quarto volume rebacked and reinforced with boards and blue cloth spine); all housed in a modern quarter morocco clam-shell box.
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