Ferdinand Bac
Ferdinand Sigismund Bac ( born August 15, 1859 in Stuttgart, † November 18, 1952 in Compiègne ), actually Bach, was a French painter, caricaturist, writer and landscape designer.
Life
His father Karl Philipp Heinrich Bach (1811-1870), a geologist, cartographer and landscape architect was an illegitimate son of Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia and the Countess of Lion's Arch. His mother was Sabina Ludovica de Stetten (1817-1904), the illegitimate daughter of Sigismund Ferdinand Stetten. Shortly after the birth of their son, the family moved to Ludwigsburg, where his father worked as a cartographer. Later, Bach lived in Munich. On April 30, 1878, he was enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Later, he lived with his mother in Paris. Here he changed his name to Bac. Between 1880 and 1890 he created cartoons for the weekly La Caricature and Le Figaro, often " gallant " content. He traveled among other things, to Morocco, Turkey and Norway. After spending 1907 with Maeterlinck the winter in Grasse, he discovered his passion for the Mediterranean. On the Côte d' Azur, he also discovered the Gardens of Harold Peto Ainsworth. Between 1925 and 1939 he lived on the Cote d' Azur in Les Columbiéres.
Gardens
In his gardens he wanted to embed the Mediterranean culture in the landscape and remove superfluous ornaments in favor of a uniform design. He rejected both the eclecticism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as classic modernism. Plants and especially their colors were irrelevant in his gardens, it came to him, especially on the play of light and shadow. Bac admired the Hadriana Villa in Tivoli and Spain, the Moorish and Romanesque architecture. But here he found that ornaments distracted only by the interior design.
Bac 1913-1919 designed the garden of the Villa Isabelle Marie- Thérèse de Chévignet in Grasse. In 1920 he designed the garden of Les Columbiéres in Menton Garavan with Émile and Caroline Octavie Ladan - Bockairy. Topic were the travels of Odysseus. So there was a source of Nausicaa. House and garden are now a listed building, the gardens are only partly preserved. Bac also designed the gardens of the Villa Fiorentina in Cap Ferrat for the Countess Beaumon. As garden designers he influenced, among others, Luis Barragán.
Writings
- Villes et jardins Méditterranéens Les Colombières, ses jardins et ses décors. 1922
- Les Colombières, ses jardins et ses décors. Conard, Paris 1925
- Odysseus. Conard, Paris 1925
- Jardins enchantés. Conard, Paris 1925