Pavlovsk Park Lorraine and Hubert Robert. The gallery of Pavlovsk has twelve landscape paintings by Hubert Robert that were commissioned by Maria Feodorovna. Its inspiration lay not in England but in continental gardens that Maria Feodorovna and her husband had seen in a tour of western Europe in 1782, during which they travelled incognito as the "Count and Countess du Nord". They visited her family's park at Württemberg, where Maria Feodorovna had grown up, and were impressed by the Petit Trianon in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France. The deepest impression, however, was made by the Château de Chantilly
Palace of Versailles in July 1789 when she first heard the news from Paris of the storming of the Bastille and the beginning of the French Revolution. One of the most celebrated features of the park is the Hameau de la Reine, a small rustic hamlet near the Petit Trianon created for Queen Marie Antoinette between 1783 and 1785 by the royal architect Richard Mique with the help of the painter Hubert Robert. It replaced a botanical garden created by Louis XV, and consisted of twelve structures, ten of which still exist, in the style of villages in Normandy. It was designed for