Picturesque hamlets such as Le Hameau de la Reine were not unknown in 18th century France. The Prince de Condé had one at Chantilly and there was a village at Méréveille. The creation of these villages was influenced by the natural philosophy extolled by Rousseau and the country life genre paintings of painters Greuze, Le Nain, and Chardin. Le Hameau was designed for Queen Marie Antoinette by her favorite architect Richard Mique and the painter Hubert Robert. The painters Tolède and Dardignac painted thousands of little cracks and false half-timbering in the structures to suggest picturesque humbleness, poverty, and age. All the structures in the hamlet were more or less modelled upon similar structures in Normandy and Flanders. Construction on the hamlet started in 1783 and was completed in four or five years.