The Lay of the Land: English Landscape Themes in Early Modern Painting in England
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The Lay of the Land: English Landscape Themes in Early Modern Painting in England Barbara Lou Budnick A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Christine Goettler, Chair Estelle C. Lingo Susan P. Casteras Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Art History ©Copyright 2017 Barbara Lou Budnick University of Washington Abstract The Lay of the Land: English Landscape Themes in Early Modern Painting in England Barbara Lou Budnick Chair of Supervisory Committee: Professor Christine Goettler Art History Landscape paintings generally offer a far and wide view of external world, including all parts of the built and natural environment that pass before the eye. As a genre in England, landscape painting arose slowly in the second decade of the seventeenth century, portraying royal palaces and their prosperous environs along the Thames. This dissertation examines the development of an English landscape iconography based on property, both real and intellectual. I argue that during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries traditional English hierarchies of ownership were combined with new concepts of achievement to reimagine exclusive rights. To analyze visual works within an early modern context, I draw on a range of late sixteenth- to late eighteenth-century written sources, including diaries, journals, private correspondence, public rolls, personal account ledgers, periodicals, poetry, histories, travel texts, and scientific works, as well as economic, political, and aesthetic treatises. Such a broad literature of source material is interdisciplinary and situates landscape imagery in its historical period. Similarities and differences in verbal and visual representations reveal how concepts of knowledge changed throughout the period: just as contemporary manuscripts and printed texts celebrated increasing concentrations of riches and innovative technologies, landscapes depicted larger properties, advances in science, and recent sources of prosperity. Large numbers of patrons chose portraits of their houses surrounded by local landscape features and familiar terrain. But they also commissioned paintings of birds and animals in landscape settings that stylistically mimicked the rhetoric of English scientific societies. In addition to technological advances, both commercial successes and productive land also inspired novel landscape imagery. The exotic territory of foreign lands, for example, proved as well-suited to glorifying England’s thriving trade as it did to advertising a patron’s progressive taste or range of knowledge. I examine how landscape images fit into these cultural processes and, in conclusion, I find that the newly emerging themes of landscape painting promoted a reevaluation of customary patterns. In particular, painters designed and copied imagery in which new sources of wealth and intellectual skills brought the same social and political advantages as did the ownership of land and great houses. Acknowledgments My dissertation is the product of extended research over the course of many years, relying on the resources of many institutions and the expertise of numerous scholars. I owe my deepest gratitude to Christine Goettler, now at the Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Bern, for her continual guidance, encouragement, and patience with my project’s wide range of material and extended time length. Her own exemplary research provided a model, while she guided me through the challenges of various media and inspired a more thoughtful analysis. At the University of Washington, I am grateful to insights of faculty and fellow students from several disciplines and departments, including English and Comparative Literature, Textual Studies, History, Art, and Architecture, as well as Art History. My initial idea was formulated in a class on English Art taught by Fritz Levy from the History Department, while my methodological approach was shaped by the Textual Studies program, then under the direction of Raimonda Modiano. I appreciate her guidance in interdisciplinary scholarship, and her classes on textuality, material culture, and the history of the book. I owe a debt to Leroy Searle’s contemporary account of literary theory, as well as Paul Remny’s introduction to manuscript studies. In the Architecture Department, Grant Hildebrand provided a grounding in English architecture and in the intricacies of Medieval construction techniques. In the Department of Art History, I owe thanks to Pat Failing and Marek Wieczorek for their classes on art historical theory and Rene Bravvman for a broad cultural interpretative perspective. Susan Casteras read many papers during the development of my project and offered support essential to its completion. Estelle Lingo’s scholarship and elegant prose on the Italian Renaissance formed a constant written model; Jeffrey Collins, now at Bard College, encouraged an analytical language unburdened by time-bound terminology. I am also indebted to the private and institutional collections in the United States, continental Europe, and Great Britain that house the material of my dissertation. The conservation efforts of the National Trust in the United Kingdom and the National Trust for Scotland have preserved many of the buildings, archives, and artefacts in my study. I am grateful for the care and preservation of houses in England and the many generations of families who maintained their collections. My dissertation particularly relies on the resources preserved at Ham House and Clareden Park in Surrey, Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, Wollaton Hall in Nottingham, Birdsall House in Yorkshire, Buckingham Palace in London, and Windsor Castle in Berkshire. For extended periods of time the library, collections, and study rooms of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, formed a home for my writing and research. In London I additionally drew material from the Wallace Collection, the National Gallery, the National Picture Gallery, the Tate Britain and the Drawing and Prints Room at the Tate Gallery, the Museum of London, the Courtauld Institute of Art, John Cass Primary School, and Hampton Court Palace. The Guildhall Library, the British Library, the Library of the Royal Society, the British Parliamentary Archives, and the Public Record Office also provided sources for my research. Outside of London I owe thanks to the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, Pensthurst Place in West Kent, the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery in Plymouth, the Nottingham Castle Museum in Nottingham, University of Nottingham Library, Nottingham, Richmond Castle in North Yorkshire, and Pontefracte Castle and the Hepworth Market Hall Art Gallery, both in Warwick, West Yorkshire. At the University of Cambridge I owe gratitude to Cambridge University Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum. At Oxford I drew on the resources of the Bodleian Library, the Ashmoleum Museum, and the University of Christ Church Picture Gallery. In Scotland, Stirling Castle and Falkland Palace contributed to my sources for early seventeenth-century landscape painting. In Edinburgh, I benefitted from resources at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the University of Edinburgh Library, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. Closer to home, I am indebted to the University of Washington Library, the Seattle Art Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Huntington Library, the Denver Art Museum, the Yale Center for British Art, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and the Tryon Palace, Raleigh, North Carolina. I owe thanks to the librarians, curators, and staff who kindly allowed access and space to work. From the breadth of texts on general British cultural and historical studies to research on single subjects or archives, I am grateful for the large body of literature on all aspects of the early modern period. Inspiring are the originality of ideas, the eloquence of expression, dedication to scholarship, and pains-taking scholarly editions of original sources. The enthusiasm, concern, and interest of the writers of my source material is stimulating in and of itself. In addition, conversations with two good friends, Marvin Andersen and Catherine Barrett, directed visual interpretations and contributed to a more concise architectural analysis. I thank them for their ideas, motivation, and maintaining an interest in my project over many years. Finally, I am grateful to John Caldbick for his time and patience in carefully reading and skillfully editing countless iterations of my dissertation. Contents List of Illustrations Introduction: Genres of Landscape 1 Chapter I. The Early Estate Portrait – Rights of Land 35 Chapter II. Views of the Country House, 1660-1714 102 Chapter III. Customs of Possession – The Seventeenth-Century Country House Poem 171 Chapter IV. Painting an English Landscape 236 Chapter V. Influences of Science and Natural History – Resources of Land and Culture 302 Continuations: An Epilogue 375 Conclusion: The Shape and Shaping of Property 402 Bibliography 414 List of Illustrations Fig. 1.1 Greenwich Palace, c. 1615, oil on canvas, 43 x 77 cm. Greenwich, National Maritime Museum Fig. 1.2 Prospect of London and the Thames from above Greenwich, c. 1620-30, oil on panel, 29.4 x 92.25 cm. London, Museum of London Fig. 1.3 Adriaen van Stalbemt and Jan van Belcamp, View of Greenwich, c. 1632, oil on canvas, 83.5 x 107 cm. London, The Royal Collection Fig. 1.4 Richmond Palace, c. 1620, oil on canvas, 152 x 304.2 cm. Cambridge,