House & Garden 
THE GREATEST PALACE AND 
GARDEN OF FRANCE. 
NTEREST in the palace and park of 
Versailles, always well sustained, has of late 
years been on the increase if one may judge 
from the num¬ 
ber and impor¬ 
tance of the 
books recently 
published. 
Among these 
there come to 
mind at once 
those of Rous- 
s e 1 and of 
Favier, both of 
which are at 
best collections 
of well chosen 
photographs 
with brief 
introductions, the exhaus¬ 
tive history of the chateau 
by Pierre de Nolhac and 
last but perhaps most 
important, the work of 
Lambert and Gille, “ Ver¬ 
sailles et Les Deux Trian- 
ons.” 1 The joint authors 
have very special qualifica¬ 
tions for the task. M. 
Philippe Gille, who con¬ 
tributes the text was the 
first, after the Franco- 
Prussian war, to draw 
p u b 1 ic attention to the 
neglected state of the 
Palace and its surround¬ 
ings, and it was to him 
chiefly that the extensive 
restorations since made are 
due. His study of Ver¬ 
sailles and its history, a 
study occupying a large 
part of his time for twenty- 
five years, has marked him 
as the one most capable 
of undertaking the text of 
such a work. M. Marcel Lambert, to whom 
the illustrations are due, is known to archi¬ 
tects not only as a professor at the Ecole des 
Beaux-Arts but as that holder of the Grand 
Prix de Rome, whose restoration of the 
Acropolis at Athens was a tour de force. 
M. Lambert is architect in chief at Versailles 
and his knowledge of the buildings and their 
surroundings has been gained during the 
years in which he has been in charge of the 
restorations. 
His facility as a 
draughtsman is 
well known and 
his skill in di¬ 
recting o thers 
in the prepara¬ 
tion of draw¬ 
ings is s h own 
by the present 
work, which 
completely 
eschews photo¬ 
graphs and de¬ 
pends entirely 
upon the hand 
of the artist for its illus¬ 
trations. It is indeed to 
these illustrations that the 
work owes much of its 
distinction. They reach a 
high level of excellence 
both as drawings and as 
reproductions and exhibit 
a variety of artistic pro¬ 
cesses ranging from the 
very sumptuous engraved 
plan of the domain in its 
present state to the helio¬ 
gravure of a water color of 
the interior of the theatre. 
The number of plates 
printed in color is very 
great, but even with their 
color many of them hardly 
possess for the eye of the 
architect such a charm as 
is found in the simply but 
very skilfully rendered 
elevations of the Entree 
de TEscalier de la Reine or 
of the Grande Orangerie 
of Mansard. 
i Versailles et Les Deux Trianons, Releves et dessins par Marcel 
Lambert, texte par Philippe Gille. Vol. I., pp. 308 5 plates 38, ills, 
in text 176, 1899. Vol. II., pp. 297; plates 37, ills, in text 224, 
1900. Size, I 7 // • Tours, Alfred Mame et Fils. New 
York, Bruno Hessling. Issued in 25 parts. Price 12 francs per part. 
35 
