"Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing." - Johan Huizinga, 1955.
“The green Parc Monceau, with its soft lawns veiled in misty curtains of spray from the sprinkler, attracted me, like something good to eat. There were fewer children there than in the Luxembourg. It was better altogether. But those lawns that are swept like floors! Never mind, the trees enchanted me and the warm dampness I breathed in relaxed me….that sound of leaves, how sweet it was!” - Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, excerpt from Claudine In Paris, 1901.
The stylized scene of Parisians at leisure on the decorative screen (above) was made by Jean-Emile Laboureur in 1899 when the recently married Colette, a provincial girl new to the capital, was writing her popular and titillating series of 'Claudine' novels from an attic room. Her visits to Parc Monceau were occasions when she escaped from the apartment where her husband M. Willy kept her locked up unit she produced a certain number of pages. Doubtless, Huizinga would not have been surprised to see the little brown dog sitting (in the second panel from the right). As to what constituted a Nabi picture, the historian of the movement Charles Chasse said that a picture had meaning only when it possessed "style." Elements of that style were inspired by Paul Gauguin and the contemporary discovery of Japanese wood block prints (ukiyo-e).
The stylized scene of Parisians at leisure on the decorative screen (above) was made by Jean-Emile Laboureur in 1899 when the recently married Colette, a provincial girl new to the capital, was writing her popular and titillating series of 'Claudine' novels from an attic room. Her visits to Parc Monceau were occasions when she escaped from the apartment where her husband M. Willy kept her locked up unit she produced a certain number of pages. Doubtless, Huizinga would not have been surprised to see the little brown dog sitting (in the second panel from the right). As to what constituted a Nabi picture, the historian of the movement Charles Chasse said that a picture had meaning only when it possessed "style." Elements of that style were inspired by Paul Gauguin and the contemporary discovery of Japanese wood block prints (ukiyo-e).
No less a personage than Joan of Arc camped at Monceau during her audacious attack on Paris in summer of 1429. By the reign of the Sun King, Louis XIV in the 17th century, the Rive Gauche was no longer an empty field. It had become a popular address for the palaces of aristocrats and the private mansions of the wealthy. These urban residences were known in French as hotels particulers. Philippe d'Orleans, Duc de Chartres (1747-1793), a cousin of King Louis XVI, purchased the historic Monceau plot in 1769. Fabulously wealthy, especially after marrying the richest woman in France, he felt emboldened to indulge in a bit of cousinly rivalry. Begun in 1773, the garden he commissioned from the engineer/architect Louis Carrogis Carmontelle took six years to complete.
"...it was not my object to define the place of play among all other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play." - Johan Huizinga, from the forward to Homo Ludens, 1938.
His relationship to the king led to Philippe's execution during the French Revolution, his properties confiscated by the state. Parc Monceau went untended until Napoleon III hired Baron Haussmann to make a modern city of Paris. The renovated park became Haussman's first green space in 1861. It is frequently described as the prettiest park created during Haussmann's tenure, for its splendid entry rotunda, golden gates, and English-style curving walkways (seen in countless paintings).
Another engineer, Adolphe Alphand (1817-1891) was put in charge of promenades and laid out a refurbished Parc Monceau that opened in 1861. Some of the old follies were kept, and new features added, including a stream crossed by a bridge, a cascade and a grotto. Moving water was used to evoke cleanliness, a quality sorely lacking in the dark, dirty streets of the old Paris. The public was enchanted and artists flocked there to paint: Raffaele Ragione, Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Henri Lebasque and even the American, Childe Hassam.
![]()
His relationship to the king led to Philippe's execution during the French Revolution, his properties confiscated by the state. Parc Monceau went untended until Napoleon III hired Baron Haussmann to make a modern city of Paris. The renovated park became Haussman's first green space in 1861. It is frequently described as the prettiest park created during Haussmann's tenure, for its splendid entry rotunda, golden gates, and English-style curving walkways (seen in countless paintings).
Another engineer, Adolphe Alphand (1817-1891) was put in charge of promenades and laid out a refurbished Parc Monceau that opened in 1861. Some of the old follies were kept, and new features added, including a stream crossed by a bridge, a cascade and a grotto. Moving water was used to evoke cleanliness, a quality sorely lacking in the dark, dirty streets of the old Paris. The public was enchanted and artists flocked there to paint: Raffaele Ragione, Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte, Henri Lebasque and even the American, Childe Hassam.
Today people walk their dogs and children play among the decaying pre-Revolutionary relics just as they did in Colette's day. Only their clothes have changed. The modern world may impinge on the edges of the park more than it used to but this little fantasy world is a monument to the primacy of play in human life. The hoops and pails and shovels the children play with in Jean-Emile Laboureur's decorative screen could be the forerunners of wheels and steam shovels.
For further reading: Homo Ludens: A Sudy of the Play Element in Culture by Johan Huizanga, translated from the Dutch, Kettering, Ohio, Angelico Press: 2016 (reprint of 1955 edition, Boston, Beacon Press).
Images:
1. Jean-Emile Laboureur - Paravent a quatre feuilles (Standing screen with four leaves), 1899, felt glued on painted burlap, 128,5 x 180cm., Musee d'Orsay, Paris.
2, Gustave Caillebotte - Le Parc Monceau, 1878, private collection, France.