Lion statues cross the Atlantic

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Previously on this blog:
1. I discovered a striking similarity between lion statues placed at De Paauw (ca. 1855, Wassenaar, The Netherlands) and at Drottningholm (ca. 1865, Stockholm, Sweden).
2. Before I came round to explaining how these estates, and therefore the statues, were related through the Dutch Royal family at the time, I found more similar lion statues in the garden of Powerscourt (1850-1867, Wiclow, Ireland), whose owner does not seem to have had any relationship at all with that Royal family.
3. A description of that garden gave us the source for all of these lion statues: the Egyptian statues situated at the bottom of the stairs to the Palatine mountain in Rome.

So we have three instances where similar lion statues appear in gardens across Northern Europe, in a very limited period: between 1850 and 1867. And their inspiration, which is much older, originated far more south and travelled across the Mediterranean from Egypt to Rome.
This all suggests a sculptor’s studio produced copies of the original in small numbers, during a short period in the third quarter of the 19th century.

And then photo’s of Scott fountain at Belle Isle Park started to appear in the photo group on Flickr. This fountain was started in 1919, finished in 1925 and created by architect Cass Gilbert and sculptor Herbert Adams. Around the base four lions play a role in the elaborate waterworks of the fountain.

The similarities with the 19th century statues are obvious. Compared to the ones at De Paauw (above) the Detroit statues (right) show the details in more relief, but the lions in Wassenaar seem to have the smoothest finish of them all. Seen from the side the Belle Isle Park lions look very much like the originals in Rome (see the HGimages link below this post for more photos).

But the gap between the occurance of these statues is over half a century.

Why Herbert Adams (1858-1945) used these lions, and where he got his inspiration from, is material for further research. He went to Europe in the 1880s, where he worked for French sculptor Antonin Mercié, who consequently created two statues in the US in 1890 and 1891.
Adams’ work consists mainly of busts and statues of people, he may even have only sculpted the Scott-statue situated near the fountain. In that case Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) could have chosen to install exactly these four lion statues on the fountain.

Amidst all the uncertainties, it is clear that the Palatine lions remained an inspiration for sculptors far into the 20th century, even outside Europe. Whether they were mass produced as copies since the 1850s, or whether they kept inspiring individual artists over and over again, remains to be seen.

Summary

Lion statues found at the Scott fountain in Detroit’s Belle Isle Park are inspired by ancient Egyptian statues now located in Rome. But copies of these Palatine lions already appeared in Europe decades earlier. The precise connection between them all remains uncertain.

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Garden bunkers unearthed

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In my previous post I mentioned the WW II bunkers in the garden of Beeckestijn. I had not planned it this way, but this weekend I visited the garden of Toorenvliedt (Middelburg) and noticed several bunkers from the same era there. 1The bunkers formed part of a defense unit built by German soldiers as part of the Atlantik Wall, called Stützpunkt Brünhild. Like at Beeckestijn, the Toorenvliedt bunkers were covered with a layer of soil after the war, with plantations on them.

But where Beeckestijn seems to have buried the bunkers for good, another approach is taken in recent years at Toorenvliedt. A small foundation successfully urged the Middelburg council to revive this part of the cities’ history. 2The foundation is called Stichting Bunkerbehoud. It was decided to unearth one of the bunkers completely, and install an information center in it. In 2008 the bunker resurfaced, was connected to the electricity grid and the interior was adapted to its modern purpose. Now it is open at least once a year, but I’m sure the foundation wants it to be open more frequently.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The bunkers formed part of a defense unit built by German soldiers as part of the Atlantik Wall, called Stützpunkt Brünhild.
↑2 The foundation is called Stichting Bunkerbehoud.
Summary

While the World War II bunkers at Beeckestijn are buried forever, the bunkers at Toorenvliedt are made visible. One of them is even turned into a WW II information center. An idea to introduce at other locations?

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A small piece of Beeckestijn history

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There is a lot to tell about Beeckestijn at the moment, since it has entered yet a new stage in its development. The estate has finally been transferred to its destined owners: Natuurmonumenten and Vereniging Hendrik de Keyser. More about that and several other developments must wait, till I have time.

Today I just wanted to show a picture that relates to a crucial stage in Beeckestijn history: the mere destruction by Dutch (first) and German (later on) soldiers during WW2 (source). The German soldiers were quartered in the house to man the east part of Festung IJmuiden. An anti-tank ditch (“Tankwalgracht”) that was part of this section of a protective ring created around Amsterdam by the German occupiers, ran east and south of the gardens of Beeckestijn.
Two Three of the bunkers that were built in the garden are still visible, although they are covered with a layer of ground and plantation.

Edited at 9 jan 2014 after corrections by Laura Fokkema.

Schaamgroen for Duinlust

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In the previous post I expressed my dismay about the abolishment of visually important elements in a Spanish park, after it was restored or renovated. But Spain is of course not alone in this. We have our own examples in Holland.
A few years ago, for instance, things looked good for Duinlust, near Haarlem. A restoration plan was presented and there were even plans to execute it. I wrote about it in this post. Since then the economic crisis happened, a new owner arrived, one of the instigators of the plan (Stichting PHB) was liquidated – and the plan seems to have been dropped. The result is that I only have one tiny image of the original plan to show.

One of the key components of the plan was to partly replant the hedges that had screened off the retaining walls of the terrace around the house. A local weblog shows a detail of the plan, where the hedges are vaguely visible along the edge of the terrace below the house. Although that blog post is just over a year old and the previous owner was still in place, the emphasis is on the restauration of two garden buildings, not on the hedges.

The postcards to the right show the situation before 1910. On both sides of the grand stairs leading up to the terrace (or down into the garden), hedges block the view at the retaining walls. This was not only the view from the garden but also from the sunken public road running past the house (Duinlustweg -it still is the view). The walls are not completely blocked, but enough to soften the blow of the eye hitting an ugly wall.

That wall is visible on my photo below, taken in 2007. The stairs need to be exposed, they are therefore covered with a layer of -now deteriorated- cement. The parts of the wall that should be covered by hedges simply consist of unembellished bricks. The photo also shows that hedges are now planted on the elevated terrace, effectively blocking the view from outside at the plants on display in the terrace garden.
I don’t know when the current situation was created, but it obviously misses the elegance of the original layout. The idea of blocking the view at the wall was clearly better than the current situation. The retaining wall is similar to electricity units or other utility buildings in gardens: they are necessary, but one doesn’t want to see them. Plants are used to cover things up. In Dutch a term for that kind of planting is ‘schaamgroen’,  a degrading term which practically reflects the reason of its existence and also the poor quality of the way these areas are generally fitted into larger historical layouts. But the tiny postcards above show that it doesn’t have to be that way.
So I hope the new owners of Duinlust will pick up the restoration plans somewhere and get themselves some quality schaamgroen real soon.

Menkemaborg storm damage

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The storm that swept over the Dutch countryside last weekend, has taken down two beech trees near the Menkemaborg. The trees fell into the historical garden, but fortunately missed the statue of Pallas Athena.

The statue was protected by a wooden casing (visible in the centre of the picture), but that would not have protected it from a falling fully grown tree.
The hegde lining the garden inside the surrounding moat is damaged over a length of ten meters, and a few conically shaped yew trees have taken a blow as well.

The Garden

Over the last century a lot of effort is put into the recreation of the garden that once occupied the site. The original garden was probably designed around 1705, by Allert Meijer (1654-1722). In the course of the 19th century the garden was re-landscaped according to the fashion of the day: it became a garden in landscape style.
After the last occupant of the house died (1902), the borg was transferred by the Alberda van Menkema family to a regional museum. The next 25 years were spent on restoring both the house and the garden into something that harked back to the original splendour of the 18th century. Finding the map by Meijer helped the restoration of the garden immensely, although landscape architects H. Copijn en Zn. did not fully restore the garden.

From the 1980s onwards, further work was done to restore or reconstruct the 18th century garden. While doing so, many original 18th century features were found (like the foundations of several pavilions made from trelliswork). Many of the statues in the garden are copies of 18th century statues.
In 2010 the maze, designed by H. Copijn en Zn. in 1921, was replanted. For this reason the maze is closed in the upcoming years.

The Trees

The beech trees that have fallen down formed part of the avenues surrounding this garden, lining the outside of the moat. According to the current owner, the trees appeared to be healthy. The root system of one of the trees now appears to have been infected; the storm proved to be too much to handle. According to the Menkemaborg website, the hole in the tree line will get bigger: there already was approval to cut down several sick and dead trees immediately next to the now fallen trees.

Hikers are advised to avoid the avenues during strong winds, and the condition of the remaining trees shall be assessed. Which leads me to think that those avenues will probably see some chainsaw action in the near future. Glad the avenues also consist of oak and lime trees, which are less vulnerable.

The Statue

Pallas Athena is a painted terracotta statue that was bought by the Menkemaborg in 2007. It was unveiled on June 16 2007. Pallas used to stand in the garden of Dijksterhuis in Pieterburen, an estate also owned by the Alberda van Menkema family, so in some way it stayed in the family.
Maybe that is what saved her.

Summary

Falling trees missed the Pallas Athena statue at the Menkemaborg by a hair.

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Representing the unknown

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The find of a 2700 year old garden in Ramat Rachel just south of Jerusalem is spectacular enough to get the imagination going. Luckily for us the garden was well preserved, that is: the irrigation canals and foundations of buildings surrounding the garden. Scientists will do various soil and pollen research in order to find out which plants grew here.
The result of their ongoing research might tell us more about the similarities and differences between this garden in modern day Israel and Mesopotamian gardens from around the same date. Mesopotamian gardens from the Assyrian kings Sargon II (721-705 BC) and Sennacherib (704-681 BC) in and near Nineveh (near modern day Mosul, Iraq) could have greatly influenced the layout of this Ramat Rachel garden. Lying in Judah, Ramat Rachel became part of a vassal kingdom of Assyriah in the 7th century BC, around the time these Mesopotamian gardens were at their prime. But the differences must have been large as well, knowing that both places lie some 900 kilometers apart. I’m very curious what the archaeologists will find.

The Unknown

An intriguing insight into the way the garden looks to the archaeologists is presented by Boaz Gross from Tel Aviv university, as presented on the LiveScience.com website (click image to enlarge). We see different kinds of trees within an enclosed space. There is water supply by what seems to be some sort of aqueduct supported by arches, letting the water run into and through the garden through irrigation channels.
But this drawing is intriguing not because what it tells us about the garden. For instance, it doesn’t give any information about dimensions, territory, about the organisation of plants, nor does it tell us what the paths looked like or -bar one- where they were.
It intrigues because of the way it looks.

The Representation

Neo-Assyrian bas relief in the British Museum (645-635 BC, reg.nr. 1856,0909.36). probably Possibly a representation of the Hanging Gardens.

The drawing immediately sprung out because it does not show what the garden looks like, it shows how a garden would have been represented in ancient times. And I was impressed. Because it is very difficult to draw something you have no first hand impression of, and not make it look like something produced in your own day, like something remotely familiar to you. 1The quite detailed description of Pliny’s garden near Rome has inspired artists in the 17th and 18th century to draw plans of that garden, based on the description alone; and every plan is more telling of the garden style in the artists time than of Pliny’s garden.
And then I found it: the drawing of what the Ramat Rachel garden may have looked like, is an almost exact copy of a bas relief now kept in the British Museum (including the man standing in a doorway, wearing a pointy hat). The relief is believed to be a representation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or of gardens similar to these. Researchers now believe these hanging gardens were located in Nineveh.

Which makes it a very appropiate illustration, given the ties between the regions, but not a representation of what the Ramat Rachel garden may have looked like (let alone an ‘artistic impression‘). The archaeologist knew that, the science websites missed it.
Like I said: I’m very curious to see what the archaeologists will find.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The quite detailed description of Pliny’s garden near Rome has inspired artists in the 17th and 18th century to draw plans of that garden, based on the description alone; and every plan is more telling of the garden style in the artists time than of Pliny’s garden.
Summary

The drawing of how the 2700 year old garden at Ramat Rachel (an amazing find) could have looked like, is actually an almost exact copy of an artefact in the British Museum.
Keep digging fellas!

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