Press release -
Major loan of André Le Nôtre drawings to Versailles
This year is the 400th anniversary of the birth of André Le Nôtre, creator of the French baroque garden. To mark the occasion, the Château de Versailles is staging an exhibition about this landscape architect and his work, which opens on 22 October. Nationalmuseum is loaning 27 drawings of gardens to the exhibition, most of them by Le Nôtre’s own hand.
The large number of originals in Stockholm is largely a result of Le Nôtre’s close friendship with his Swedish pupil, the architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. Among the drawings are designs for the gardens that Le Nôtre created for Louis XIV at Versailles and nearby Grand Trianon. To coincide with the anniversary, the French postal service is issuing a series of stamps including two motifs derived from works in Nationalmuseum’s collection.
While the Nationalmuseum building in Stockholm is closed for renovation, the museum is able to loan out artworks from its collections to a greater extent than usual, both within Sweden and worldwide. Selected pieces from the collections are on display in temporary galleries at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts (Konstakademien) in Stockholm and in exhibitions co-produced with regional museums and art galleries across Sweden.
The exhibition André Le Nôtre en perspectives. 1613–2013. is on show at the Château de Versailles from 22 October 2013 to 23 February 2014.
Further information
Hanna Tottmar, press officer, hanna.tottmar@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4390
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Nationalmuseum is Sweden’s premier museum of art and design. The collections comprise older paintings, sculpture, drawings and graphic art, and applied art and design up to the present day. The museum building is currently under renovation and scheduled to open again in 2017. In the meantime, the museum will continue its activities through collaborations, touring exhibitions and a temporary venue at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm. Nationalmuseum collaborates with Svenska Dagbladet, Fältman & Malmén and Grand Hôtel Stockholm. For more information visit www.nationalmuseum.se.
