Edited by Valentine de Ganay and Laurent Le Bon

This is the very first book about Courances, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful parks in France, an estate a little over 30 miles from Paris in the Ile-de-France. In spite of being classified as a 'Monument historique' and open to the public, Courances has not, until now, been seriously researched. More than 30 contributions and over 450 reproductions are brought together in this book, each one a new perspective or analysis reflecting the diversity of the place itself, each one uncovering the mysteries of its creation and of its evolution from the Renaissance until today. Courances, the book, is a 'promenade' that captures the spirit of a place at the same time classical and romantic, historical and contemporary.

The creation of the park spreads over five centuries, from the original design which displays an audacious mastery of water, predating the typically French formal gardens 'à la française', through the fashionable English-style of the 19th century and a rediscovery of classical forms at the hands of the Duchênes at the beginning of the 20th century. Today's modern appearance, closer to a contemporary minimalism, is the result of the rationalisation that has taken place since the Second World War. Landscape architects, gardeners and the various owners have continually reinvented the estate.

The châteaux of Courances and the neighbouring Fleury were built for the same owner at the end of the 16th century and today both once more belong to one family. Lying five miles from each other on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, their parks contain two remarkable gardens, both designed by women. The Japanese garden in Courances: the work of Berthe de Ganay, assisted by Kitty Lloyd Jones, a student of Gertrude Jeckyll; and Fleury's 'Kitchen garden', the creation of Martine de Béhague (the sister of Berthe de Ganay and famous art collector), later completed by Marie de Mouchy, sister-in-law of Charles de Noailles, the only French president of the International Dendrologists Society.

A collection of writers offer us a new understanding of the history of this estate. Among them we find Françoise Boudon, a historian of the gardens of the Renaissance; Monique Mosser, specialist of the 18th and 19th centuries; Olivier Poncet, who recounts the evolution in the social status of the owners; Alexandre Gady, a historian of architecture; and the landscape architect Daphné Charles, who describes the territory which today belongs to the Parc Naturel Régional of the Gâtinais français. Two chefs have created an original menu from local produce, including a 'granité de cresson' and a 'terrine de coulemelles'. The present owner answers very matter-of-fact questions put by his daughter. Equally contributing their own unique impressions are landscape architect Pascal Cribier; architect John Pawson; the philosopher Ruwen Ogien; Annie Le Brun, writer and expert on Alfred Jarry; the sociologists Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon-Charlot; as well as artists Markus Hansen and Martin Walde.

There are more than 450 illustrations including: infra-red images to reveal the traces of old ponds; aerial views, charts and maps; rare photographs by Cuvelier, a contemporary of the painters of the Barbizon school; previously unpublished sketches from the notebooks of the Duchênes along with photos taken by Achille Duchêne; and new pictures taken by contemporary photographers as varied as Jean-Baptiste Leroux, Michael Kenna and Christoph Kicherer.

The editors
Valentine de Ganay is a writer and the daughter of the present owner of Courances. Laurent Le Bon is a national heritage curator of France as well as being curator of exhibitions at the Pompidou Centre. He has written several essays on the arts and teaches landscaping history at the Ecole du Louvre.

Specifications: 264 pages, 450 reproductions, 230 x 230mm, bound-volume, price 45 Euros, on sale from April 10, 2003. Publisher: Flammarion, Julie Rouart, +33 (0)1 4051 3077. Valentine de Ganay, + 33 (0)1 4587 3659.

A digest of the discoveries presented in the book, Courances

· A style of garden, the WATER GARDEN, existed in France after the enclosed medieval gardens and before the parks à la française. It dates from the Renaissance and Courances is one of the most beautiful examples that still remain today. (article by Françoise Boudon)

This style of 'water garden' did not originate in Italy, but in northern European cities.

The Grand Canal of Fleury (800 metres long) was the first of its kind in France and inspired François I to imitate it at Fontainebleau.

13 springs have been identified and this book presents the first mapping of Courances' water circulation. The word Courances derives from the number of water currents ('eaux courantes' in French), captured and diverted with an extraordinary diversity on land which is practically flat.

The sculpted sandstone lion and dolphin heads spitting water, known as the gueulards, were either influenced or made by Italian artists working with Primaticcio at Fontainebleau.

· It appears that Christopher Wren visited Courances before working on Hampton Court Palace.

· The historical debate surrounding Le Nôtre :
1) In the 1990s, the historian Thierry Mariage claimed that Jean Le Nôtre (the father of André, who worked on the Tuileries gardens) must have worked on Courances, after establishing the existence of letters and fiduciary links between Le Nôtre and Gallard, the owner at the time.
2) Aurélia Rostaing, curator at the ArchivesNationales, took the research further and discovered that Gallard, an extremely wealthy individual, had simply lent money to Jean Le Nôtre to finance his purchase of a house in Paris !
3) Georges Farhat, responsible for the most radical reappraisal of the work of Le Nôtre in recent times, asserts that Courances represents the genius of Le Nôtre nonetheless. He explains how Courances contains the elements that inspired the designer of Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte (the water innovations from the end of the 16th century) as well as elements that those who succeeded him, and who wished to revive his work, such as the Duchênes (father and son) fancifully attributed to him : simplicity, perspectives, surprises…

· Monique Mosser, the foremost French historian of gardens, reveals that Destailleur, known primarily as an architect of the end of the 19th century (having worked for the Rothschilds etc…) did not merely 'restore' Courances; he left his mark as a landscape architect too. It was he who, before the Duchênes, restored the main axis, removed certain ponds and created, among other things, the jigsaw-style pond known as le Dauphin.

· Fleury, whose park is open to the public just one day a year, figures in this book because one family, the Clausses, built Courances and Fleury at the end of the 16th century and today, one family, the Ganays, owns both. To work on Fleury, Cosme Clausse employed Pierre Lescot, the architect of the Louvre, and Gilles le Breton, master mason of Fontainebleau. He purchased Courances for his second son. Nowadays, the Ganays joke that they ought to put the beautiful château of Fleury in the beautiful park of Courances !

· It was a Gallard who laid the foundations for Courances in its present form, around 1630. But it was Destailleur, who in 1872 gave Courances its 'typical' Louis XIII appearance by using period bricks on the house and the pavillions and modern bricks to cover his additions : the main staircase, copied from the one at Fontainebleau and the new wing, thus fooling the historians of the 20th century. In this way, Destailleur lent legitimacy to the newly-acquired noble status of Samuel de Haber, affiliating Courances with the royal château of Fontainebleau.

Jean-Louis de Ganay, the present owner, erased the excesses of Destailleur's 'restoration', his supposed 'embellishments', but of course did not touch the bricks.

Fleury did not suffer similar upheavals. Without the help of a Destailleur or a Duchêne, Martine de Béhague established the classic beauty of Fleury at the first attempt and on her own. In the 18th century, Chaussard designed a sophisticated park, halfway between classical and baroque, which in the 19th century was entirely re-modelled in the English style, with the exception of the Grand Canal. René Edouard André completed its reconfiguration before the Second World War. Martine de Béhague also laid the foundations for the Potager, including the Persian Garden (she used the same porphyry marble for the theatre in her Paris mansion, at the time the largest private theatre in Europe…)

It is because both estates are owned by the same family that the grounds between Courances and Fleury, 40 minutes from Paris on the southbound motorway, are so well preserved. The cynegetic and agricultural concerns of the five Ganay brothers are today shared by the Parc Naturel Régional. Were they ecologists before their time?

· Pascal Cribier, the landscape architect who recently redesigned the Tuileries, and amateur of Courances, says that the trees that are left to lean, unthinkable at Versailles or at Vaux, give a sense of the depth of time, without the excessive deference to a supposedly historical model that Versailles and Vaux are perhaps guilty of. For him, Courances displays a rare balance between nature and human design, the straight lines and the importance given to empty space; for him Courances is at the same time classical, romantic and modern…