When Queen Marie-Antoinette (1755–1793, r. 1774–1792) looked out the windows from the royal residence at the Petit Trianon in 1781, she was rightly proud of the view. In less than five years, she had redesigned the landscape, replacing a botanical garden with what contemporaries designated as a jardin anglais or English-style garden (Figure A). The queen dispensed with pre-existing axial alignments, creating her own flourishing enclave: verdant green lawns were bordered by trees and flowering shrubberies, colorful blooms perfumed the air, and a gurgling stream conjured auditory delight. A gleaming, white neoclassical temple imparted a cue that the garden was intended to encode an allusion to landscape painting: the gardens became “picturesque,” worthy of a picture.

In 1783, the queen was evidently so pleased with her artfully contrived landscape that she expanded her garden, commissioning twelve buildings to be built in a vernacular half-timbered style and placed in a semicircle around an artificial lake (Figure B). Each house was surrounded by a vegetable plot, and the entire complex was joined to a working farm. By the time of the Hameau's completion in 1788, the queen's carefully cultivated realm had become a site of semiotic chaos. Critics claimed she “dissimulated” in her garden, renouncing her queenly status, performing as milkmaid and shepherdess, confusing art and reality. The queen's alleged misperception is branded today as a “Marie-Antoinette moment,” a moniker of social derision often invoked to satirize political and social gaffes notably made by women in the public eye.

Less than six years after the queen's regicide, Joséphine Bonaparte (1763–1814, r. 1804–1809) gazed out her windows at Malmaison and contemplated a strikingly similar scene: a vast lawn encircled her country house, bordered by flowering shrubs and clusters of trees (Figure C).