François Racine de Monville

François Nicolas Henri Racine de Monville (October 4, 1734, Paris – March 9, 1797) was a French aristocrat, musician, architect and landscape designer, best known for his French landscape garden, Le Désert de Retz, which influenced Thomas Jefferson and other later architects.

Monville was a distant relative of the playwright Jean Racine. He was born on October 4, 1734, in the hôtel de Mesmes on rue Sainte-Avoie in Paris. He was the son of Jean Baptiste Racine du Jonquoy the Treasurer-General for Bridges and Highways and Receiver of Finances (General Tax Collector) of the town of Alençon. Jean Baptiste Racine du Jonquoy had been found guilty of fraud in 1742 and imprisoned in the fortress of Port-Louis, where he died in 1750.

Monville was raised by his maternal grandfather, Thomas Le Monnier, who gave him a good education. He grew up in his grandfather's Paris house on the rue des Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. Monnier was the son of a provincial draper, who in 1724 had become a fermier général or tax-farmer; one of the Tax Collectors on contract to the Government to gather tax from the public while retaining a sizable commission for themselves.

In 1757 François Racine de Monville purchased the title of Grand Master of Waters and Forests for Normandy (where his family held land), a title which he resold in 1764. Monville's family was related by marriage to the powerful Duc de Choiseul, whose brother had married Monville's niece. Choiseul was a favorite of Madame de Pompadour and was for a period the virtual Prime Minister of France. Although Monville cut quite a figure at the court of Louis XV he was unsuccessful in being named host for visiting ambassadors for Louis XV, this is possibly related to the lessening power of Choiseul after Madame de Pompadour's death in 1764, and the eventual forced retirement of Choiseul in 1770.

In 1775 de Monville married his third cousin Aimable Charlotte Lucas de Boncourt, and during their marriage he used the titles Racine du Thuit, Seigneur de Monville, which he later stopped using. After five years his wife died, followed a few months later by Monville's grandfather, who left him a large income from land holdings in Normandy.

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