The Golden Age of the English Landscape Garden
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The Golden Age of the English Landscape Garden By DR. ALEXANDER M. SAUNDERS Associate Professor of English During THE latter half of the eighteenth admit any distant prospect or object of pic- into a profession (landscape gardening) . century the English landscape garden torial interest . The inner edge of the belt Between 1783 and 1814 he provided his achieved its highest peak of artistic develop- is irregular . and softened by outlying patrons with garden layouts more pictur- ment. In the estimate of a contemporary, clumps or individual trees which hide . esque than Brown's Arcadian landscapes it had reached such perfection as to be "en- the line of the belt's containing fence."' after the manner of Claude Lorraine . Fur- titled to a place of considerable rank among The woodland walk around the belt of trees ther, he prompted the choice of his own the liberal arts . It is superior to landskip provided views of the whole estate or select style over that of Brown by supplying his painting, as a reality to a representation : it views of its parts. Artificial streams or wealthy patrons with "Red Books," re- is an exertion of fancy; a subject for taste; lakes helped to enliven the views . Brown ports bound in red morocco leather and il- and . the most beautiful, the most sim- frequently eliminated the sunken fence lustrated with watercolor views (he called ple, the most noble scenes of nature are (ha-ha) and brought the grass of the park them "slips" or "slides") of houses and all within its province ." It was the achieve- up to the very house itself, and he uprooted grounds as they were and as they would ment of professional as well as amateur old avenues of trees and put clumps of look after his prospective improvements. gardener, whose business it was "to select hardwoods in their place. They showed "the broadened lake, the and apply whatever is great, elegant, or His contemporary reputation was dubi- clumped avenue, the varied forms of the characteristic . .; to discover and to skew ous : to some he was a brilliant innovator, to plantations of trees, the longer sweeps of all the advantages of the place upon which others a vandal and a destroyer. He is said park achieved by the removal of fences and he is employed ; to supply its defects, to cor- to have declined an invitation to visit Ire- hedges. Less drastic than Brown, he had rect its faults, and to improve its beauties."' land on the pretext that he had not yet fin- acquired . something of the taste for And it became the passionate hobby of no- ished with England, and one man of taste the picturesque; plantations were no longer bility and gentry until the eclectic tastes of hoped that he might see the heavenly gar- in uniform shape and contained a mixture the Victorians delivered it into the hands dens before Brown had a chance to improve of trees. Rough grounds of I trees broke of the Philistines . them . After his modifications of the river the expanses of turf, and sheets of water The supreme creator of the pictorial gar- views at Blenheim, he is alleged to have re- had the accidental banks of a lake rather den was Lancelot ("Capability") Brown marked, "Thames, Thames, you will never than the smooth sides of a broad river." (1715-83), who earned his nickname be- forgive me!" On the other hand, some Repton's objective was a happy mean be- cause he examined estates with an eye critics had only good things to say of his tween the old-fashioned formal garden and toward their capability of improvement. work ; and his reputation extended down the new landscape garden : the grandeur of He served his apprenticeship (1740-48) un- into Regency days. In The Beauties of Le Notre's seventeenth-century gardens at der William Kent at Stowe; and on the England and Wales (London, 1813), Versailles and the grace of Brown's gardens death of his patron, Lord Cobham, in 1749 X11, ii, 270, J. N. Brewer praised him to "call forth the charms of natural land- he became a practising landscape gardener. unqualifiedly for his work at Nuneham- scape," which "he certainly endeavoured to In 1764 George III set the official seal of ap- Courtenay, a 12,000-acre estate in Oxford- carry out in his first big work, begun in proval on his work by appointing him chief shire, which "evinces, in every division, 1790, at Cobham in Kent, and he congratu- gardener at Hampton Court. Brown's pop- great richness of natural circumstances, lated himself warmly on having retained a ularity and commissions were enormous, improved by the hand of reverential, straight terrace as being more in keeping and for thirty years he profoundly affected rather than of presumptuous, art. Perhaps with the style of the house than the 'fre- the development of the art of gardening. the talent of Brown . was never displayed quently repeated waving line of beauty.' "' His genius lay in the creation of beautiful to greater advantage. Each artifice to Repton despised anything in the landscape rather than picturesque scenes. "With heighten pictorial effect is so judiciously that suggested "convenience and comfort" Brown, avenues merely gave way to clumps concealed, that the whole seems graceful and sought to make it ornamental . "Arable and belts, canals to serpentines, straight in the simplicity of nature." land and utilitarian buildings must be put paths to winding walks, terrace parterre The death of Brown in 1783 opened the out of sight. Mown grass or pasturage was and labyrinth to tree-dotted lawns that car- way for new ideas in gardening. His suc- to stretch and undulate from the doorstep ried their undulations up to the drawing- cessor, Humphry Repton (1752-1818), in to the distance, and where such undula- room windows.`2 His "typical park land- turn merchant, country gentleman, and tions, natural or artificial, were too little scape resolves itself into a few obvious ele- private secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of pronounced and too little relieved by trees ments. The park is bounded by an encir- Ireland before his retirement to a cottage in and water, herds of deer and cattle were cling belt of woodland . interrupted to Sussex, converted his hobby (gardening) freely scattered over his drawings to give PAGE 2 0 SOONER MAGAZINE the desired diversity. Like Brown, he was ture of the picturesque in the writings of in(, with certain emotions evolving about a great expositor and creator of the . the two friends, Richard Payne Knight pictorial and sentimental-literary conven- gentle falls and risings that breed cheerful- and Uvedale Price. Price had found the tions. In accordance with pictorial ideas ness . All was to be suave, rounded, neat. terms beautiful and sublime, popularized parks were laid out as a series of landscape They I Brown and Repton] smoothed a by Burke's essay On the Sublime and Beau- views in the style of admired painters and thousand-acre park in almost the same tiful (1756), insufficient to characterize the governed by the principles of the beauti- spirit as the formalists had clipped their "numberless objects which give great de- ful, the sublime, and the picturesque. As yew hedges." light to the eye, and yet differ as widely Horace Walpole in his Essay on Modern from the beautiful as from the sublime."' Gardening (1770) says, "Every journey is ORE of an architect than a gardener, This intermediate term was the pictur- made through a succession . of pictures." MSir William Chambers (1723-96) esque, which had come into popular use Concentration on the sentimental led to stimulated, perhaps unwittingly, the grow years before among such "picturesque" the development of the garden of mood, ing interest in exoticisms, especially Chi- travelers as Gilpin, Warner, and Ireland. designed to arouse feelings reminiscent of nese, during the latter part of the century. Burke had identified the beautiful with those stimulated by poetry in much the Born in Sweden of Scots parentage and ed- qualities of smoothness and regularity and same sense that historical associations lead ucated in England, Chambers made three the sublime with qualities that excited feel- us today to speak of the spirit of places. voyages to the East as a young man and ings ranging from awe to terror. The pic- The most famed of the old-fashioned afterwards studied architecture in Paris and turesque, on the other hand, stressed in- gardens to conform to the new taste was Rome. In 1755 he became tutor in archi- tricacy and variety, roughness, age, and Stowe, Lord Cobham's 400-acre estate in tecture to the future George III and later decay, and above all "a sudden deviation" Buckinghamshire. It has been happily published three books on architecture . He from the regularity of the beautiful." The characterized by a modern critic as a pa- laid out Kew Gardens for Princess Augusta chief distinction between the ideas of Price limpsest, because, like a sheet of old monk- and embellished them with classical and and Knight was that the latter made beauti- ish parchment, one landscape gardener oriental pavilions and temples, among them ful and picturesque synonymous, and the after another has erased the work of his a Chinese pagoda. In his Dissertation on former considered the picturesque to be a predecessor and substituted in its place his Oriental Gardening (1772), which he char- separate and distinct critical term inter- own modifications. The original gardens acterized with tongue in cheek as "a piece inediate between the beautiful and the had been laid out by Vanbrugh and Bridge- of nonsense of my own about gardening" sublime.