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Flemish Garden drawings and paintings

Vredemann de Vries

Among the painters who experienced the kindness of Rudolph the Second’s love of art the Dutch stood first. Because of their alliance with Spain, who ruled the world, the provinces of Flanders at that time provided a favourable soil for the development of  garden art. From the very beginning Holland had made a great effort to surpass its natural limitations. With an insatiable hunger, Flemish artists seized upon the material of the whole world. Dutch garden art lives for us still in an abundant supply of pictures, both paintings and woodcuts, and above all in those copper engravings that the Flemish people loved so dearly. It may be that with this mass of material individuality was sometimes wiped out; for in the immense number of pictures of the months and seasons we find spring and summer, April, May, and generally some autumn months as well, depicted as garden scenes; and these in the faithful reproductions of this most realistic kind of art give many significant details of the style of that day; yet these gardens are not to be taken as individual portraiture, for the same scene is often found transferred from one picture to another.  For instance, a painting by Breughel in the Museum at Lille (Fig. 365) and another by Abel Grimmer at Antwerp (Fig. 366) show exactly the same garden with scarcely any change in the accessories.

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FIG. 365. A FLEMISH STUDY OF SUMMER WORK IN THE GARDEN

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FIG. 366. A FLEMISH STUDY OF SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN

 Again, an Italian goldsmith, finding on two drawings by Hans Boll certain garden scenes, copies them on an embossed plaque, adding details of ornament in the Italian style (Fig. 367).

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FIG. 367. THE GARDEN IN APRIL; FROM AN EMBOSSED PLAQUE

It is still harder to discover what is truly Flemish in the pictures produced by those Dutch artists who went to earn their living at foreign courts. There is no doubt that the beautiful garden landscape by Valckenborch (Fig. 368) in the museum at Vienna depicts the seat of an Austrian prince, with labyrinth, pond, and different gardens.

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FIG. 368. VIEW OF A GARDEN IN FRONT OF AN AUSTRIAN TOWN

The architectural painter Vredemann de Vries lived and died at the court of Rudolph II. His numerous garden sketches, which were published in 1568 and 1583 in a series of engravings called Hortorum Viridariorumque Formæ, have more of the town character; and although he chiefly took his examples from the gardens of his own home, they are best ranked as specimens of the German style. De Vries was a zealous student of Vitruvius, and thought that his gardens could have no higher recommendation than that they were divided as Vitruvius demanded into Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. But it is not the fact that there is any real difference in style. The gardens are very much alike, even in so far as they try in individual parts to obtain a great variety. At any one site there are always different gardens divided by hedges or barriers, and seldom with any axial arrangement.  For the most part they have a tree in the middle, now and then a pavilion (Fig. 369) with a fountain, and occasionally are varied with a sunk basin. 
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FIG. 369. A DUTCH STUDY OF A GERMAN GARDEN WITH ARBOURS

Round the grander gardens run pergolas with doors, windows, and domes (Fig. 370). The arbours are often supported on pretty pillars with Herms, but there are very few real statues.

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FIG. 370. A DUTCH STUDY OF A GARDEN WITH PERGOLAS AND DOME

The beds are always laid out geometrically, and often have small trees at the corners or in the middle, and borders of stone or box. Frequently the whole garden is enclosed with galleries. This sort of parterre is not as a rule next to the house, which usually has a lawn by it, meant for a playground. There is not much water, and this is generally treated as a fountain in the middle, never as a canal unless that is just a large basin—the sort so commonly found in French gardens of the same date. If we compare the drawings of de Vries with gardens that were really carried out at this time, such as the Kielmann gardens at Vienna (Fig. 371), the relationship is easy to see. 
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FIG. 371. THE KIELMANN GARDENS AT VIENNA

This important place, in spite of its coherence in general plan, is divided up into a whole series of separate gardens, each dominated by a summer-house with which are ranged twin fountains as chief ornament of the geometrical beds. The bordering of arbour walks and the entrance gates recall the Schwindt garden, to which this one is superior in size and magnificence, but not in the feeling for style.

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