NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Nashville’s Franklin Hamilton Hazlehurst has joined William Faulkner, David Bowie, Jackson Pollack and other luminaries in L’Ordre des Artes et des Lettres, an Order of France recognizing significant contributions to the arts and literature.
Hazlehurst, an emeritus professor of fine arts and former chairman of the department at Vanderbilt University, was honored July 13 at the American Embassy in Paris with the title of Officier.
“To have this happen at the end of my career, it’s something of a miracle,” said Hazlehurst, 80. “It’s the frosting on this old cake.”
The title labels Hazlehurst as having “significantly contributed to the enrichment of the French cultural inheritance.” The American Friends of Chantilly, a Nashville-based philanthropic group of Francophiles, played an important role in bringing Hazlehurst’s accomplishments to the attention of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Hazlehurst’s contributions to French culture focus on his study of the elaborate formal gardens of 17th century France, particularly those designed by Andre Le Nostre, the acknowledged master of the form. Le Nostre followed in the footsteps of landscaper Jacques Boyceau, who approached French formal gardens from an aesthetic point of view rather than their utilitarian aspects. Hazlehurst is the author of Jacques Boyceau and the French Formal Garden.
From this initial study emerged Hazlehurst’s Gardens of Illusion: The Genius of Andre Le Nostre, published in 1980 by Vanderbilt University Press and reprinted four times. The book won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award given by the Society of Architectural Historians as “the most distinguished book of scholarship in the history of architecture between November 1979 and October 1981. It was researched for more than 30 years.
The first French language edition of Gardens of Illusion was published in Paris in December 2005 with help from a grant from American Friends of Chantilly.
“We were so impressed with the scholarship of Professor Hazlehurst that we felt that the book should be published in the French language, the native tongue of Andre Le Nostre,” said Roger Burgess, president of American Friends of Chantilly.
Hazlehurst said the French edition was important to him.
“Twenty-five years after the publication of the original manuscript, to finally have a French edition assures me that the original really had validity,” Hazlehurst said.
Hazlehurst arrived at Vanderbilt in 1963 and served as chairman of the fine arts department until 1990. The faculty on his arrival consisted of “a sculptor and a painter.” When he stepped down, the department had more than a dozen faculty, an annual lecture series, and more than 6,000 pieces of art of museum quality through the help of the Vanderbilt Arts Association, which Hazlehurst helped found.
Hazlehurst was named emeritus professor in 1995. He writes an occasional article and lectures to local organizations, but mostly has “a wonderful time enjoying life” with wife Carol Foord Hazlehurst.