Nature
My dear readers,
Sometimes, you just need a landscape or a special place to feel lost and submerged by beauty of things. Although I’m an architect and amateur of complex works, I also have a strong attraction for the simplest things, contenting myself with a landscape to paint.
Recently, I discovered a place that I want to share with you so much it is wonderful and, moreover, as simple as complex.
But above all, let me introduce you Albert Kahn. He was a former banker, who made his fortune quickly by speculating on gold, and gave his life to intellectualize society and create of peaceful world. As a close friend to the philosopher Henri Bergson, but also with the famous Renoir, he built particular links with Japan and Asia in general, that he even received many presents from the Emperor itself.
Fantastic gardens
If I speak about this man today, it is not because of his forfeiture after the financial crash of 1929, but for what he did for the world and the heritage he let us.
Indeed, his main works is a garden in his previous house, in Boulogne Billancourt. Admiring the Asian culture and horticulture, he undertook, after he travelled all around the world and created the biggest auto chromes collection, the creation of a garden with the will to spread out flowers and trees from the four corners of the world.
We named this types of gardens « scene garden » where he could melt all styles: a regular style for his French garden, landscape style for his British garden, Japanese style for its Japanese garden. And it is a true pleasure to walk there, even if, after his death, the only part of the garden which was really preserved, even if transformed, was the Japanese garden.
My dear readers, a Serbo-Croatian proverb says “It grows more in a garden than what we sowed” and take all its sense when we visit Albert Kahn’s garden…
See you soon!
