Image: National Gallery, London
The exhibition ‘Jardins des Lumières, 1750-1800’ is presenting nearly 160 works on the emergence of landscape art in the 18th century at the Grand Trianon in Versailles, France. It opened on 5 May 2026 and remains on view through 27 September 2026, and includes three paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard brought together for the first time, lent by the Banque de France and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
The presentation examines the development of the landscape garden during the period 1750-1800. According to Château de Versailles, the exhibition traces the birth of a form of landscape art that moved away from the rules of the formal French garden, instead emphasizing fantasy. The works are presented as evidence of a changing relationship between artistic representation, garden design and the experience of nature.
Fragonard’s contribution gives the exhibition a particular focus on scenes of leisure and entertainment. According to the Château, the group consists of the Banque de France’s Fête à Saint-Cloud, dated 1755-1780, together with two further canvases from the same ensemble lent by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The Château describes them as evoking an unreal, enchanted atmosphere and the pleasure in living that characterised the end of the Ancien Régime. Their first presentation together creates a concentrated view of the artist’s treatment of cultivated landscapes as settings for pleasure, reverie and spectacle.
The exhibition also extends beyond the gallery spaces to the gardens of Trianon. The Château’s visitor information identifies sites including the Belvedere, the Temple of Love and the Queen’s Hamlet as part of the surrounding experience, describing them as open-air spaces that can be encountered after the indoor display. This relationship between the works and the historic garden environment is central to the exhibition’s invitation to reconsider how 18th-century pleasure gardens were imagined and used.
Château de Versailles is supporting the exhibition with an official application offering a complete route through the display. Materials for younger visitors include an audio guide, explanatory labels and a game booklet, with the institution presenting the exhibition as an interactive experience for families. A catalogue and an official poster have also been produced in connection with the show.
The loans from the Banque de France and the National Gallery of Art in Washington are tied specifically to the Fragonard group. The Château also names four canvases by Hubert Robert lent by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for a reconstruction of the bathroom decoration from the château de Bagatelle, and states that the exhibition was realised with the exceptional participation of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and with patronage from Dior. It is curated by Elisabeth Maisonnier, chief heritage curator at the musée national des châteaux de Versailles et Trianon. The Fragonard group sits within a broader survey of the landscape garden’s development in the second half of the 18th century, when formal conventions gave way to more imaginative approaches to designing and depicting nature.
‘Jardins des Lumières, 1750-1800’ is on view at the Grand Trianon in Versailles from 5 May to 27 September 2026, closed on Mondays.
