Between Orléans and Paris, Arcueil received its name from the Roman aqueduct, the Arcus Juliani, that passed through the property. The castle and the garden were commissioned by Anne-Marie-Joseph de Lorraine, Prince de Guise. On his death in 1747, the land was inherited by his grand-daughter who was married to the Prince de Beauveau. The house was sold in 1752 to a lawyer who listed the contents of the garden, among which are the pavilions of metal and wood trellis-work that appear in the present drawing: 'deux treillages de bois et de fer...en haut de l'escalier de la grande terrasse près du terrain renfermé d'un côté par le mur de l'aqueduc'. The garden was destroyed in the 19th Century. Another drawing by Natoire, inscribed 'aqueduc d'arceuil', and dated to the same year as the present sheet was in Jean Masson's second sale, 6 December 1923, lot 91. When the property began to fall in decay, a number of artists came to draw the garden. Drawings by Boucher of the garden, engraved by Chedel, are in the Albertina (inv. 12191) and in the Art Institute of Chicago, R. Slatkin, François Boucher in North American Collections: 100 Drawings, exhib. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1974, no. 57, illustrated. Wille, Pierre, Portail, Julliard (J.-F. Méjanès, op. cit, figs. 7, 8) also drew the garden, but surely the draughtsman who worked most at Arceuil was Jean-Baptiste Oudry, during his stay there in 1742. Hal Opperman records more than fifty views of the garden, H. Opperman, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, exhib. cat., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1983, nos. 129-138, illustrated and figs. 129/138a-p, 132a, 133a-b, 137a. A drawing in the Louvre records the same location in the park as the present drawing, but from a slightly different angle, where only a part of the left pavilion is visible, H. Opperman, op. cit., fig. 129/138g and also L. Duclaux, Inventaire général des dessins, école française, Nadar - Ozanne, 1975, XII no. 281, illustrated.