Conservatory Garden in Central Park

Photo from the Central Park Conservatory website

[Larger photo here]

This is a hidden gem (as are many things in New York) in Central Park. It is located between 104th and 105th street, on Fifth Avenue.

Here is what the Central Park website says about the garden:

The Conservatory Garden is divided into three smaller gardens, each with a distinct style: Italian, French and English. The Garden's main entrance is through the Vanderbilt Gate, on Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets. This magnificent iron gate, made in Paris in 1894, originally stood before the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street.

Wikipedia has a little more information:

The Conservatory Garden is the only formal garden in Central Park, New York City. Comprising 6 acres (24,000 m2), it takes its name from a conservatory that stood on the site from 1898 to 1934. The park's head gardener used the glasshouses to harden hardwood cuttings for the park's plantings. After the conservatory was torn down, the garden was designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, landscape architect for Robert Moses, with planting plans by M. Betty Sprout; constructed and planted by WPA workers, it was opened to the public in 1937.

I couldn't find any information on M. Betty Sprout, except that here in Google books (from the the book Garden Guide: New York City) she is mentioned as "[Gilmore D. Clarke's] future wife at the time project was in the planning stages. The Google book reference also mentions Thomas Drees Price as part of the design team.

This site has more information on Price, calling him a landscape architect. He also worked as part of the team which excavated "Horace's Villa" in Rome in 1930.

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Time For Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are blooming now, from yellow/cream puffs to variations of mauve and violet.

I have had the above postcard for years, and managed to keep it pretty much in tact. It has no title except at the back there is "Reproduction d'une oeuvre de Jean-Pierre Cassigneul," and a copyright with 1980 - it is not clear if that is the date of the painting or of the postcard print.

Cassigneul is a painter I really don't know anything about. Here is his website, with a biography and a large sample of his works. He draws and paints sinewy, pensive women in big hats, often by the seaside which looks like the northern French coastline, surrounded by large bouquets of flowers, often hydrangeas. He had his first exhibition in 1952, and is still producing work.

A recent Christi's auction brought $266,500 for Cassigneul's painting Le Massif d'Hortensias. That's a pretty respectable price.


I cannot find the title or the date of the piece above, but it has the grayish cast of the northern France coast. The muted colors of the hydrangeas brighten the painting. There are ships on the water, so this cannot be a view of some large river. Dieppe and Deauville are large towns on the Atlantic coast, although Deauville is (and was) a more popular vacation resort. Many of Cassigneul's paintings have Deauville as the seaside resort, so even those not bearing that city's name most likely depict it.

L'Hortensia Bleu, 2007

L'Hortensia Bleu is a dark, broody painting, with blue wall paneling and a violet/blue hydrangea. The empty writing pad suggests a letter that cannot be written, where words are not forthcoming. The wicker chair belongs to the southern, airier climate, but even that doesn't give respite to the dark interior.


The above piece is titled Le Massif d'Hortensias and again I cannot find its date. It is one of the few pieces which evoke the heat of a summer in southern France. But the surrounding trees suggest a northern region.

Femme au Balcon, Vue de l'Avenue Foch, 1990

Finally, above are hydrangeas even in the city, with the gray background reminiscent of the norther sea. This time, I was able to find a title and a date for the painting. This painting appears to have been appraised at between $72,921 and $97,228.

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