Pleasure Houses and Doornsburg

Wealthy Dutch bourgeois also built manor houses with pleasure gardens. Written by Matthaeus Brouerius van Nidek (1677–1743), Het zegenpralent Kennemerlant, with captions in both Dutch and French, provides a visual record of the gardens of the bourgeois eighteenth-century maisons de plaisance at Kennemerlant, a fashionable country resort north of Haarlem. The architecture of Kennemerlant estates drew influence from both French and Italian baroque styles. The villas were compact, with small self-contained gardens dominated by formal design elements. Trees were planted along canals, squares, and avenues that led to these estates.

Above: Pleasure houses lining the banks of a canal, screened by rows of trees; below: the estate of Doornsburg.

Image Source

• Brouerius van Nidek, Matthaeus. De zegepraalende Vecht. Amsterdam: N. Visscher, 1719.