Daily Archives: November 12, 2024

Tuesday, November 26, 4:00 am – 5:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Chinoiserie: Tea, Trade Routes, and a Taste for the Exotic, Online

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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 fourth lecture in this Gardens Trust series brings back Dr Laura Mayer on November 26. Chinoiserie – an early European interest in the arts, architecture and gardening of the Far East – blossomed in Georgian Britain, coinciding with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and modern consumerist society. Soon, every landscape park and public pleasure ground in the country had a Chinese pagoda, bridge, barge or brightly painted tea-house in which to drink tea, that most fashionable of imported luxuries.

This lecture will examine the politics and trade routes of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as the growing craze for informal gardening. This had been gaining traction since 1685 when William Temple published his appraisal of East Asian garden asymmetry, without ever having traveled to China. The talk will consider the authenticity of British Chinoiserie, and reveal what, if anything, the landscape style owes to Asia’s early gardens. In short, just how English was the English landscape garden after all? Image: The Chinese House at Shugborough, Staffordshire, photo c.2009 © Laura Mayer. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-of-gardens-3-tickets-1011314337407

John Berryhill Named Executive Director of The Botanic Garden of Smith College

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The Botanic Garden of Smith College is pleased to welcome John Berryhill as its new director. Berryhill has been serving as interim director since January as part of a career at the botanic garden that began over 27 years ago. He brings to this role an in-depth understanding of the botanic garden, a steadfast dedication to its mission and a strong commitment to the partnerships that are at the center of its work.

Berryhill has worked in many different roles during his tenure–as a garden steward tending to the outdoor collections, as an arborist caring for our historic arboretum, and most recently as landscape curator managing the outdoor team and launching several conservation initiatives. These projects and priorities have connected Smith students to the work of the botanic garden community at both a regional and national scale. In the summer of 2022, Berryhill earned a Master of Science from Smith making him the first Smithie to serve as director of the botanic garden. His research focused on mountain magnolia’s vulnerability to climate change, which led to the development of a conservation collection at Smith College. Berryhill has long been a proponent of social and environmental justice as being central to the botanic garden’s work. This priority has led to outreach and collaborations with local Indigenous leadership and conservation organizations, which will help shape the future direction of the Botanic Garden of Smith College. 

Through Sunday, December 15 – Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature

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Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents the vibrant career of the renowned Scottish artist, Rory McEwen (1932-1982). Focusing on his remarkable paintings of plants, the exhibition reveals McEwen’s lifelong enquiry into light and color in portraying his unique concept of the natural object. Over the course of his career, with his all-embracing perspective of modern art, McEwen developed a distinctive style, painting on vellum and using large empty backgrounds on which his plant portraits seem to float. In his paintings he forged his own personal interpretation of 20th century modernism, portraying individual flowers, leaves and vegetables as subject matter, “as a way of getting as close as possible to what I perceive as the truth, my truth of the time in which I live.”

Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature presents 85 watercolors on vellum and paper, representing a wide range of the artist’s work, along with many of the well-known 17th and 18th century masters who influenced him—including Robert, Redouté, Ehret, Aubriet as well as early illuminated manuscripts and folio volumes. McEwen’s work is also presented alongside the works of numerous contemporary artists who in turn continue McEwen’s artistic legacy. It includes works on loan from the Collection of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Mellon’s Oak Spring Garden Foundation Collection, the Shirley Sherwood Collection and the McEwen Family Estate Collection, as well as works from numerous private collections, most of which have never before been seen by the American public. McEwen’s work is found in private and public collections across the globe, including the British Museum; Victoria and Albert Museum; Tate; National Gallery of Modern Art, Scotland; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Hunt Institute, Pittsburgh; and Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The exhibition, Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature, is presented by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College in association with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London) and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Virginia); tour management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

The Gerard B. Lambert Foundation has provided major support for the exhibition. Generous support for the Davis presentation is provided by Wellesley College Friends of Art at the Davis, the Alice G. Spink Art Fund, the Constance Rhind Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions, and the Kathryn Wasserman Davis ’28 Fund for World Cultures. Below: Rory McEwen, Tulip ‘Julia Farnese’ rose feather, 1976, Watercolour on vellum, ©Estate of Rory McEwen