The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.
This Gardens Trust online series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.
As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.
The second talk of the Gardens Trust series takes place November 12 with Judith Hawley. Gardens are composed of earth, air, water and living things but they are sometimes composed by writers; this is particularly the case in the eighteenth century. Joseph Addison and Alexander Pope fostered the adoption of classical ideals of gardening derived from the writings of Homer, Virgil, Cicero and Horace. The gardens at Stowe, Stourhead, Cirencester and Rousham Park as well as Pope’s more modest garden in Twickenham attempt to embody classical ideals of arcadian simplicity, virtuous self-sufficiency and temporary retirement from the busy world. The influences were not only classical: eighteenth-century gardens proudly foregrounded British traditions in the form of Druidical and Gothic elements. Literature also features in the placing of quotations around gardens. As well as considering famous and great gardens, Judith will also briefly touch on some of the more eccentric ones such as those created by William Stukeley, Jonathan Tyers and Francis Dashwood.
Judith Hawley is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published and broadcast on a range of eighteenth-century literary and cultural topics. As Trustee of the Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust and The London Luminaries she is involved in bringing the heritage of West London to a wider audience. For ticket information visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-of-gardens-3-tickets-1011314337407. Image below: Nathaniel Parr, after Pieter Andreas Rysbrack, An Exact Draught and View of Mr Pope’s House at Twickenham (1735), © London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Art Collection
