A Culture of Trees: The Politics of Pruning and Felling in Late Eighteenth-Century France

Before the French revolutionaries adopted the tree as a symbol of freedom, artists used arboreal images to discuss issues of royal policy and reform. Hubert Robert, Peyraud de Beaussol, Jacques Delille, Michel-Paul de Chabanon, and Adélaïde de Souza drew scenes of felling and pruning to comment upon the solidity of a cultural and political system—the ancien régime—that seemed to be vacillating at their feet. Their work was inspired by the monarchy's involvement in the management of forests, by the construction of the gardens of Versailles under Louis XIV, and the dramatic event of their replanting in 1774–5.