Hameau de La Reine - Construction

Construction

The garden surroundings of the Petit Trianon, of which the hameau de la Reine is an extension, began their transformation from formal pattern gardens. Under Louis XV it had been an arboretum and the new arrangements eliminated this famous botanical garden, replacing it with a more informal "natural" garden of winding paths, curving canals and lakes under the direction of Antoine Richard, gardener to the Queen. Richard Mique modified the landscape plan to provide vistas of lawn to west and north of the Petit Trianon, encircled by belts of trees. Beyond the lake to the north, the hameau was sited like a garden stage set, initially inspired in its grouping and vernacular building by Dutch and Flemish genre paintings, philosophically influenced by Rousseau's cult of "nature", and reflecting exactly contemporary picturesque garden principles set forth by Claude-Henri Watelet and by ideas of the philosophes, their "radical notions co-opted into innocent forms of pleasure and ingenious decoration" as William Adams has pointed out. Artists played a more direct role in French picturesque than they probably had done in England. as can be seen by Hubert Robert's involvement.