From 6 June 2008 the LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM is presenting an exhibition about the history, design and creation of the great landscape gardens of Central Europe. Displayed in the former Ladies’ Apartments and the Library at the Liechtenstein summer palace, the scope of the exhibition ranges from early examples such as the Prater in Vienna or the park of the imperial palace at Laxenburg, where parts of the extensive imperial hunting reserves were opened to the public, to the gardens situated on the eastern fringes of the Vienna Woods (Kahlenberg, Leopoldsberg, Gallitzinberg and Predigtstuhl, Neuwaldegg, Hinterbrühl), the estates at Schönau/Triesting, Vösendorf, Bruck/Leitha, Eisenstadt and Göllersdorf, and the great landscape gardens created by the Liechtenstein family in northern Lower Austria and southern Moravia.
Developed within the framework of the PRIVATE ART COLLECTIONS partnership (www.privateartcollections.at), the exhibition includes more than 200 paintings, engravings, etchings, watercolours, plans, maps, photographs and sculptures illustrating the history and beauty of these gardens, inviting the visitor to leave behind the hectic bustle of modern life and experience the tranquillity of these verdant and blossoming oases. Paintings by Bellotto, Hackert, Rebell, Waldmüller, Alt or Höger convey a comprehensive picture of this cultural phenomenon which is so closely bound up with the philosophy and history of the period between 1760 and 1850. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the leading French writer and philosopher of the Enlightenment, is represented in the exhibition by a portrait bust sculpted by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828); it was Rousseau’s maxim of “back to Nature” that provided the guiding principle for the entire landscape garden movement.
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A catalogue accompanying the temporary exhibition is available in German from the museum shop at a price of EUR 18.00. |
