Attributed to Richard Mique

Sale: Sotheby's Monaco, June 20, 1987, lot 292
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

The drawing has been folded several times, and is weak and backed with paper strips along these folds. Some minor tears and losses, some light staining and foxing, but overall condition reasonably good. Framed.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Commissioned by Louis XV from Jacques-Ange Gabriel at the suggestion of Mme de Pompadour, the Petit Trianon was completed in 1768. It was designed to provide a vantage point to the northeast of the Grand Trianon from which the King could oversee his botanical gardens. After Louis XV’s death in 1774, his grandson and successor, Louis XVI, presented the château to his nineteen year old wife, Marie-Antoinette, for whom it afforded a degree of privacy unobtainable at the bustling main palace. It quickly became her favourite residence and private refuge from the formal constraints of the French court. Uncomfortable with the Queen’s preference for an insular, idyllic existence unfettered by ceremony, a lifestyle familiar to her from her childhood at the Imperial court of Maria-Theresa, her detractors attached the acid sobriquet of “Petit Vienne” to Petit Trianon.

The Petit Trianon under Marie-Antoinette was strictly a private residence, with only family and a few cherished friends admitted; she worked closely with Mique to transform the château into “the most personal, most direct expression of (her) taste” (Oliver Bernier, Secrets of Marie-Antoinette: A Collection of Letters, New York 1986). Indeed Mique made a number of modifications to the château’s interiors in order to accommodate the Queen’s household needs, an example of this being the adaptation of Louis XV’s study, which opened on to the botanical gardens to the north and the west at the rear of the château, into the Queen’s bedchamber. It was, however, the redesigning of the gardens à l’anglaise that inspired the Queen’s greatest enthusiasm. She and Antoine Richard, jardinier de la Reine, were preoccupied with the project as early as July of 1774, however these original plans were redrawn by Mique in 1777, incorporating suggestions from the Count de Caraman, whose English garden at Roissy had greatly impressed the Queen.

The present work, executed in pen and black ink and watercolour, is therefore a fascinating and highly historic document, by virtue of the fact that it is a contemporaneous record of the alterations Mique made to Richard’s earlier proposals. However even more interestingly it appears to be one of at least three similar designs that document the evolution of the garden between 1781 and 1786; one of these was part of an album containing designs by Mique and Claude-Louis Châtelet (sold, Sotheby’s New York, 1 June 1995, lot 303) while the other is housed in the collection at Versailles (Versailles, châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, Inv. no. 475). Whilst the album is recorded as having been completed in 1781, the Versailles design includes buildings that were known to have been constructed from 1783-1786, providing us with a date of 1786 as the terminus ante quem for that particular sheet. In terms of the evolution of the project it is highly likely that the Taubman design fits somewhere in between the two aforementioned sheets, the first of which lacks many of the architectural and landscape features seen in the present work, and the latter of which includes features not yet found in ours.

The dating of these works is further supported by the financial accounts of the Bâtiments de la Reine in the French National Archives, which record intermittent payments to Mique made between 1780 and 1786 for “les diverses vues des recueils qui ont été ordonnés par sa Majesté.”