Before I Knew Florence…

…there was Paris–the endless streets of beaux-arts façades, massive reserves of art and miles of gorgeous gardens. Not to mention the food, the wine, the language, the pretty people, the shopping, the atmosphere and the way of life. It was like a great, unrequited, long-distance crush. But now Florence has stolen my affection, which makes this post about my once-favorite garden at the Musée Rodin almost nostalgic.

Dear Paris, I hope you understand. I was young and naïve, and I just didn’t know how good it could get.

Axonometric drawing of the current design of the garden at Musée Rodin. The entire site is nestled within the heart of the city, and it has a long and rich history--once a nobleman's palace and grounds, later a studio for Rodin and his contemporaries.

View from inside the building over the great lawn. The proportions of each element (lawn, paths, mixed border) are perfect, and the framing of the composition by the Maple trees completes the picture.

The combination of plants in the mixed shrub-and-perennial border is masterful, with its textures, colors and multiple-season interest.

Those framing Maples I mentioned are actually allées of pleached trees on both sides of the central lawn. Walking through the site offers new and different experiences at every turn, both with planting design and strategically located sculpture.

The view over the great lawn back towards the Hôtel Biron (the historic name of the building)

A very clean step detail that is fairly common in Paris. The principle at work here--classical materials and design pared down to their bare essence--is inspiring to me in my own work and a distinct talent of the French. (Even the Florentines will concede that point.)

A closeup, showing the relationship between the treads, risers, side walls and grade

A small seating area off to one side, another example of the brilliant use of every inch (or centimeter) of the entire site

A bosque of Lindens set in gravel provide a simple setting for a sculpture. One of my favorite aspects of this garden is the variety of treatments of trees--bosques, allees, groves and single specimens--and still never becoming "busy."

The Burghers of Calais is my favorite sculpture of Rodin, but the little moat beneath it is so distracting it's almost irritating.

The reason it's my favorite... the exquisitely wrought hands

Two icons of my former infatuation in one photo

Now on to my new love and all of its wonders…

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Art IN the Garden

As I alluded in my last post, I have recently moved. After seven years in New York, an opportunity unexpectedly presented itself, and I decided to take it. So, here I am, in a big house in a small town, close to my family and far from my work. But those stories may require a whole new blog, and I just wanted to explain briefly why I have not been keeping up with this one. Now, back to the program…

Over the last several years, I have been to Paris several times, both for work and personal endeavors. Most recently I took a last-minute two-day trip, primarily to meet a client at a job site. But I had a whole extra day, so I went looking for inspiration. It’s Paris, though–inspiration is around every corner. I don’t want to wax poetic about a city that has received centuries of more eloquent words than mine, but being there fills me with a sense of pride to be a theoretical descendant of the designers that envisioned such a beautiful place.

A recurring theme in Paris is the incorporation of art–sculpture, specifically–into their garden spaces. They are usually bold yet simple pieces that heighten the experience of the thoughtfully crafted spaces and carefully manicured plants.In the Tuileries, a curving sandstone sculpture stood in the cross-axis of the pleached allees of lindens. The contrasts between the crisp lines of the tree canopies and the undulating form of the sculpture are even more apparent in the dark shadows cast on the light gravel.

The sculpture is at the end of the allee

A closeup of the sculpture and the shadows

At the Palais Royale was another example of the organically-shaped sculpture juxtaposed with the crisply pruned trees. These were not my favorite pieces, because they are obviously taken from the despised Drawing Class 101 exercise of accurately shading a crumpled piece of paper.

Palais Royale

In fact, I did that very drawing exercise while studying drawing and painting in Paris in 2006. At that time, this odd sculpture was in the Jardins du Luxembourg.

Jardins du Luxembourg

The most impressive aspect of any of these spaces is that they are all public, and that the French obviously consider both art and gardens to be central to the experience of their capital city. And just in case there were any doubts to their dedication, there are these charming reminders:

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