„Kiosque à la turque” – nieznany projekt Jana Christiana Kamsetzera do Łazienek Stanisława Augusta
‘Kiosque à la turque’, an Unknown Design of Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer for Stanislaus Augustus’ Łazienki

Summary/Abstract: Kiosque à la Turque, an Unknown Design of Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer for Stanislaus Augustus’ Łazienki In the Gerard Ciołek Portfolios at the National Institute of Polish Cultural Heritage Abroad/?National Institute of Heritage in Warsaw there is an unknown design of a gazebo, marked: Elévation d’un Kiosc ou gloriette a la turque destiné pour le Sommet d’une montagne dans un Jardin anglaise, executed by Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer (1753-95), the architect of Stanislaus Augustus. It may be that, previously unknown, ‘Turkish Gazebo for the Łazienki’, an unaccomplished project. It shows a garden pavilion on the layout of a cross, on a high underpinning partially embedded in the escarpment, adorned with bossage, preceded with two-flight stairs featuring a rectangular landing. The higher and almost square in its layout pavilion’s middle part, is covered with a hipped rood, crowned with a half-moon pinnacle, with the lower lateral annexes covered with gable roofs. The front elevation of three high rectangular entrances divided by pillars, featuring three rectangular windows above, is open. The modest geometrized elevation decoration is contrasted by the character of the interior containing almost a square salon flanked by two annexes. The longitudinal section shows walls with plafonds and parietal sofas in niches. The net of geometrical divisions organizes the varied decorative motifs into a logical whole, giving it a character of a richly ornamented Oriental interior. The design is characterized by Kamsetzer-specific decisive line, subtle wash, and a good setting of the structure in landscape, whose generalizing vision does not allow for precise location. This being all the more challenging, as there was no separate section in Łazienki for jardin anglais. An attempt is made to approximate the dating and circumstances of the design’s creation, particularly in the context of the evolution of Stanislaus Augustus’ views on jardin anglais. In 1754, on his trip to England Stanislaus Poniatowski also visited Stowe (Stow), which he was guided through by the owner Richard Grenville-Temple, 2nd Earl Temple, and his brothers. He formulated his impressions in the memoirs: ‘La maison et les jardins de Stow, les plus vastes qu’aucun particulier eut alors en Angleterre, fixèrent d’autant plus mon attention, que cet endroit est le premirer où le goût du jardinage chinois fut étalé. Déjà de mon temps ce goût s’était raffiné et perfectionné dans d’autres campagnes. Stow, cependant, était encore regardé avec vénération, parce que c’était le berceau de ce nouveau goût, qui faisait décrier les jardins symétrisés, la triste famille des ifs et tous les colifichets hollandais que Guillaume III avait introduits en Angleterre. Ce nouveau goût, qui consiste principalement à produire des paysages artificiels dans les lieux qu’on veut décorer, était devenu une espèce de secte nouvelle et en avait presque toute la ferveur et toute l’antipathie intolérante contre la doctrine ancienne. Je ne me hasardai qu’une fois ou deux de témoigner quelque regret sur l’exclusion totale de tout alignement, en fait d’eaux ou d’allées.’ (Mémoires du roi Stanislas-Auguste Poniatowski, vol. 1, St.-Pétersbourg 1914, ed. Serge M. Goriaïnow, s. 120). The 1754 episode affected the King’s opinion, made him ‘treat the concept of landscape garden with reservation’.Having assumed as the dogma of his policy the need to ‘break away’ from the Saxon times, the King was seeking inspiration for his patronage directly in Paris. As for garden art, he would also resort to reports of his court members travelling to France, these allowing him to follow one of the symptoms of Anglomania dominating there, namely the reception of landscape garden, and the development of the assumptions of the Picturesque Garden type. This is testified to by the Essay sur le Jardinage Anglois, 1774 (Biblioteka XX. Czartoryskich, Kraków, MS. MNK 118) dedicated to him by August Fryderyk Moszyński. Moreover, the King sent Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer on a trip (1780-83) via Vienna to Italy, France, and England, for him to e.g. execute drawings there meant to show the latest ensembles and garden pavilions. The architect sent the following: from the Vienna Schönbrunn: descriptions and drawings of three cascades and the Roman Ruins (1778); from Paris: a picture inventory of the Hôtel le Grimod de La Reynière (1767) Palace with a Jardin anglais; from the Bagatelle Palace of Count Charles d’Artois (1777): views of garden pavilions of the Chinese bridge with the Gazebo and the Hermitage. Upon his return home, Kamsetzer joined the group of artists who, with the King’s participation, were working on altering the Łazienki: Dominik Merlini (as of 1774), Jan Chrystian Schuch (as of 1781), and Jakub Kubicki (1783-84). Following the creation of an irregular southern pond, plans were made for arranging other parts. In his Design for the Łazienki Layout from the Side of the Entry (1784), Stanislaus Augustus proposed to extend the northern pond for it to form an irregular fluid bank, and to leave the natural forest on the western banks: an asymmetrical composition, however not applying the concept of jardin anglaise that was to appear in 1792.An important testimony to the changes of the King’s views can be found in his correspondence from 1786 with the English man of letters Horace Walpole (1717-97), co-author of Strawberry Hill in Twickenham near London, author of the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-1771), in which he also included the history outline of gardens in England titled History of Modern Taste in Gardening. Having learnt about this major work, Stanislaus Augustus made attempts to acquire it, starting correspondence with its author. In his letter to Walpole (dated 6 June 1786), when referring to the situation in Poland, he mentioned departing from a symmetrically planned regular garden for the sake of landscape garden: ‘as it is but a few years since we do here creep out of the servitude of symmetry, we have not yet had time to come to the opposite excess, against which you endeavour to guard your Country’. This was a reference to the stand of Horace Walpole who opposed extremes, these including ‘exotism’. This praise of abandoning symmetry reveals that the King was but a moderate fan of the jardin anglaise, and if viewed in the context of the Łazienki, it allows to bring forth the dating of the Kiosque à la turque to around 1786.The gazebo was among the Orientalizing: Chinese- and Turkish-style pavilions designed by Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer for the Łazienki. The designating of the gazebo design as: [...] destiné pour le Sommet d’une montagne dans un Jardin anglais, points out to its planned location at the top of the hill in the jardin anglais section. There are two possible locations. The first: the one connected with the identification of the structure on the square layout at the top of the hill planned in the above-mentioned 1784 design of the King. The second: on the western edges of the Łazienki, close to the ‘Golgota Hill’ at the end of the Via Crucis in the former Ujazdów Calvary; the hill that under Stanislaus Augustus, following the earth filling of the ravine between the Łazienki and the Ujazdów Avenue (1777-88), turned into the point of the escarpment, while on its southern part, across from the Ujazdów Castle, plans were made (1781-85) to raise the Church of Divine Providence.The pavilion designed for the Łazienki manifested the fashion for Turquerie (from the early 18th century), this including garden pavilions inspired by Ottoman architecture, e.g. the mosque in Kew near London (from 1757, William Chambers), the minaret in Parc Monceau near Paris (1773-83, Louis Carrogis), Turkish Pavilon in Hagaparken near Stockholm (ca 1785, Fredrik Magnus Piper). In France, they were heralded by wooden garden pavilions in Lorraine raised for the former Polish King Stanislaus Leszczyński by Emmanuel Héré de Corny: in Lunéville – Kiosque à la turque (1737) and Trèfle à la chinoise (1738-41), and in Commercy – Kiosque (1741). Their genesis derives from wooden Turkish architecture which Leszczyński had become acquainted with in Moldova’s Bender. His Lorraine estates shown in the work of Emmanuel Héré de Corny, entitled Plans et élévations de la place royale de Nancy & et des autres edifices à l’environment bâtis par les Ordes du Roy de Pologne, duc de Lorraine. Dedié au Roy de France par Héré, premier architecte de SA majesté Polonaise (Paris 1753), were inspired by the structures of the French Picturesque Garden. They were also well known to Poles visiting Lunéville, among whom there must have also been August Fryderyk Moszyński who in the Essai sur le Jardinage Anglois (1774, page 97) dedicated to Stanislaus Augustus, proposed a gazebo: ‘Sur l’endroit le plus élevé de cette colline du côté de la riviere, on trouve un Kyosk Turc (87) qui sert de Belvedere. Il est fait en forme de trefle garni des jalousies, tout y est arrangé suivant la coutume Turque. On découvre de la une grande partie du cours de la riviere, et tou la contrée qui est en déla’. The comparison of the Lorraine Trèfle à la chinoise Pavilion with Kamsetzer’s Kiosque à la turque demonstrates a number of similarities: both are wooden, of ‘modest’ elevation, and with richly decorated interiors with blinds; additionally, in the layout of the Łazienki gazebo one can discern a simplified and geometrized trefoil.Furthermore, when creating the design, Jan Chrystian Kamsetzer had studied Ottoman architecture for almost a year when as a draughtsman of Stanislaus Augustus’ diplomatic mission to the court of Sultan Abdul Hamid I in Istanbul (1776-77) he was getting to know this original architecture. The studies from his own observation allowed his own attempt at modernizing the traditional form and referring to Oriental ornamentation (instead of stylization of e.g. Emanuel Héré and William Chambers). These issues in relation to the work of Stanislaus Leszczyński and Héré are discussed by Nebahat Avcioğlu who regards them to belong to the early (ca mid-18th century) stage of the exotic trend in a Turkish ‘costume’. Later on, better studies of this art allowed to imitate more precisely traditional Ottoman forms, and Kamsetzer’s design of the gazebo is a very accomplished example in this case. As for the ideological content of the Kiosque à la turque, the context of the political tension between Turkey and Russia has to be pointed to: after the annexation of Crimea by Russia (1783), and Turkey’s declaration of war (1787) both countries insisted on an alliance with Poland. This is why, among others, Stanislaus Augustus travelled to meet with the Tsarina in Kaniów (23 February – 22 July 1787). Upon returning, the King ceremoniously unveiled (14 September 1787) in the Łazienki the Monument of John III meant to commemorate the victory over the Turks in the battle of Vienna (1683). Under such circumstance it may have been a little awkward to be thinking of raising the Kiosque à la turque of such a genuine and refined design. The design of the Kiosque à la turque can be regarded as a ‘link’ in the evolution of Stanislaus Augustus’s views on landscape gardening, while the correspondence with Horace Walpole sheds light on the change of his attitude, and the ‘English context’ in the chronology of landscape gardens in Warsaw.

• Details
• Contents