Boston Flora

Tag: Richard Payne Knight

  • Tuesday, November 18, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – “An Awful Precipice”: Price, Knight, and the Picturesque

    The 18th century landscape is viewed by many as being the pinnacle of English garden design. From its early Arcadian experiments and passion for all things classical, through to the vast and minimal landscapes of Capability Brown and his contemporaries, the gardening century was brought to a close with conflicting appeals for rugged wildness and domestic prettiness.

    In a new five part series sponsored by the Gardens Trust, Dr Laura Mayer will explore some of the themes and trends that emerged during the century, with a particular focus on the role of art, antiquity and architecture in shaping 18th landscape designs. The series is designed to pick up on themes and ideas not covered in any depth in last year’s introductory course on the History of Gardens – and so may appeal whether or not you joined us for the earlier series. The ticket for the entire series costs £35 for the 5 sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust members £26.25 or £6 each]. To register through Eventbrite, click HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link, please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 2 weeks.

    The final episode of the series takes place November 18, on the Picturesque. The aesthetic category known as the Picturesque developed in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Defined by the artist and travel writer William Gilpin as ‘that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’, it was equally applicable to art, architecture and even music. In the case of British landscape, the Picturesque aesthetes championed a Romantic appreciation for rugged and sublime topography. Gilpin’s guidebooks provided advice on how to paint picturesque scenery and promoted picturesque destinations such as the Lake District to a growing band of domestic tourists who had turned their back on the Grand Tour.

    Through their writings, Sir Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight harnessed a growing disdain for the minimal landscapes of Brown and his contemporaries, instead encouraging Picturesque values of irregularity and wildness. This lecture grapples with the paradoxes inherent in a movement which championed unbridled naturalism through the artificial lens of taste, whilst recognizing the early role of the Picturesque writers in championing wilderness preservation.

  • Through May 20 – Moving Earth: “Capability” Brown, Humphry Repton, and the Creation of the English Landscape

    Time for a road trip to New Haven, to the Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High Street, at Yale University.  Drawing on the collections of the Center for British Art, Moving Earth shows how landscape gardeners relocated vast quantities of soil, water, and plant life to reshape English scenery. The exhibit runs now through May 20.

    As one of England’s greatest aesthetic achievements, the English landscape garden has become a well-known and defining characteristic of the country. With large sweeping expanses of lush green fields, groupings of trees, winding paths, and serpentine-shaped rivers and lakes, the English landscape appears as an ideal form of nature; it is, however, an expertly crafted construct. Countless hours of moving and reconstructing vast volumes of earth, water, trees and shrubbery demonstrate what can be achieved when combined with careful planning, design and an eye towards nature. Moving Earth explores the creation of the English Landscape through the advent of landscape gardening and the pioneering work of Capability Brown and Humphry Repton.

    This exhibition opens with examples of early English formal gardens comprised of geometrical patterns, topiaries, and planted parterres and examines the return to nature as seen through literary criticisms and notions from Addison and Pope. The focus of Moving Earth is on the prolific landscape gardener, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, and his successor Humphry Repton. To fully consider the development of landscape in Georgian England the exhibition highlights architects, such as William Kent and Sir John Vanbrugh, as well the ‘Picturesque’ controversy and criticisms from Richard Payne Knight, Uvedale Price, and William Gilpin, that surrounded this emerging field.

    Presented prominently throughout this exhibition are materials from the Yale Center for British Art, including the Reference Library and Archives, and reproductions from the Rare Books and Manuscripts, Prints and Drawings, and Paintings Collections. Moving Earth showcases the extent and range of materials available for research, and the depth and scope to which these concepts, ideas, and topics can be fully examined. This exhibition features an abundance of both primary and secondary resources available at the Center that provides the foundational basis for research into British art, culture and society.  Image of Repton’s Dyrham Park from www.gardenvisit.com.