Although the date on these two watercolours, and the costume of the figures in them, must indicate that they were done during Louis Belanger’s period of self-exile in England, the character of the park landscapes in them is much more suggestive of a jardin anglais in France than of actual English parkland. Piquantly, such jardins anglais were to a significant degree introduced into France by Louis Belanger’s elder brother, François-Joseph (1744-1818), who had visited England in the 1770s on two or three occasions, albeit at that period his interest lay in buildings rather than gardens. The three most celebrated gardens of the kind that he had a role in creating were those of Bagatelle, the Folie Saint-James at Neuilly and Méréville, where he was succeeded by Hubert Robert (1733-1808) in 1786. The two watercolours by his younger brother have a particular affinity with the park of Méréville, as shown in the set of engravings after drawings by Constant Bourgeois (1767 – after 1836). Concertinaed into a narrower compass, the scenic wallpaper known as Jardins Anglais, designed by Pierre-Antoine Mongin (1761-1827), and woodblock printed from 1804 onwards by Joseph Dufour & Cie, Mâcon, is likewise very similar in character. François-Joseph also made a smaller jardin anglais on the outskirts of Paris for Pierre Beaumarchais, author of The Marriage of Figaro. He recorded a number of the constructions in it himself in two watercolours, but the garden itself was recorded in a gouache by Louis in 1785,who then went on to exhibit a Suite des Jardins Anglais, of actual English gardens, and six views of English buildings and bridges, in the Salon of 1793.