Bulletin du Centre de Recherche du Château de Versailles (Nov 2018)
Reconstituer Marly
Abstract
With Academic training centred around Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, experience illustrating many architectural books and participating annually in the Salon des Artistes Français, the architectural draughtsman and engraver Auguste-Alexandre Guillaumot (1815–1892) remains closely associated with Marly. For over thirty years he visited the estate many times, seeking perspectives to sketch, which he brought together in a monograph. Through close study of drawings and engravings of the Château de Marly at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and in the Archives Nationales, and examining the remains unearthed during the first excavations at the site – carried out at his instigation – Guillaumot took on the difficult task of evoking a place that had almost completely disappeared for fifty years. He implemented an original intellectual and artistic approach, combining research-driven and field archaeology. His drawings, a large number of which are preserved at the Musée-Promenade de Marly-le-Roi/Louveciennes are testament to the pictorial sources consulted and the artistic steps between the archival material and the finished engravings.
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