Join The Gardens Trust in partnership with Kent Gardens Trust on December 11 for a special online lecture. Conventional ideas of the invention of the landscape garden in 1730s England attribute the creation of this new form of naturalistic garden design to male gardeners (William Kent, Charles Bridgeman) and/or landowners (the Earl of Carlisle, the Prince of Wales, Lord Cobham, General Dormer, etc.).
This talk will consider the activities of Caroline of Ansbach, Queen Caroline 1727-37 (wife of George II), and debates within her intellectual circle. The focus will be on underlying religio-scientific concepts crucial to developing views of the natural world that were taking place in Caroline’s lifetime (1683-1737). Such views were a pre-condition of the new form of garden that took shape in the 1730s. We will also focus on the intellectual ramifications of her transition from Ansbach to England, as Princess of Wales, in 1714. For particular reasons she was responsible for the design of a garden building that the talk will represent as seminal to the landscape garden.
The gardens involved are those at Richmond, Kensington Palace, and Stowe.
Michael Charlesworth gained his PhD in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is currently a professor of art history at the University of Texas at Austin teaching 19th century European painting and photography. He has written the first full length biography of Reginald Farrer, a critical life of Derek Jarman, as well as major articles on early photography, the picturesque, and 18th century panoramic drawing. His book Landscape and Vision in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France (Routledge) was published in 2008
This ticket is for this special session and costs £8. Gardens Trust and Kent Gardens Trust Members may purchase tickets at £6, through the Eventbrite link HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks .
