THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE MOVEMENT

In the early 18^th Century English gardens were undergoing a cultural revolution, such a swing in fashion as to be unprecedented. London and Wise were still designing gardens with features such as knots, parterres and formal axis lines but the fashion was failing, loud voices were being exercised against the rigid geometry and symmetry of the English formal garden. One of these voices belonged to Joseph Addison. Writing in the Spectator in 1712 he stated, ‘Our British gardeners on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but for my own part I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriance than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure’.  

Why did the English Landscape movement emerge? There were a number of reasons all gathering momentum since the end of the 17^th Century. Firstly the death of Louis X1V in 1715 saw the conclusion of the French baroque style as an innovative design force and its influence in England waned considerably. England had also been ruled by a Dutchman, William III and his wife Mary II, and had been at war with the French; England was tired now of what it saw as foreign influence and wished for change.

Social attitudes were also changing and the formal gardens were not delivering what was desired, exercise, fresh air and conversation while enjoying a walk. The English desire to enjoy a country walk cannot be underestimated and the desire not to see the garden all at once. They wanted the garden to reveal itself sensuously, little by little as the walk progressed. This was totally unlike the formal garden that was laid out to see in its entirety along the central axis.

The weather also played a part in the change. The formal garden in France had weather more suited to open air entertainment than the English formal garden. This is described by Clifford, ‘The gardens of France were stages upon which to parade and be seen… But for how many days of the year is it possible to live in an English garden? How suitable is the English weather for parading up and down in fine clothing? England is no place for the great ceremonial occasion en plein air unless suitable shelter is at hand… In England a garden has never been primarily a place to sit in, or a place to debate in, or a place to act in; not for the English the fetes champetres of Fontainebleau and Chantilly or Pliny’s suppers at the fountain; for the English a garden has always been a place to walk about in and to play games in’.

Financial considerations also played a part in the change.  A formal garden would require constant maintenance. Clipping was needed to keep the shapes of the topiary and the box parterres. The waterworks required regular maintenance and the gravel needed weeding and raking. The amount of gardeners just to keep a formal garden running was large. Apart from the initial set up costs of the English landscape garden, which could be high, the aftercare costs were far lighter than formal gardens. Clifford explains this when he says, ‘yet when all is said one may well think the chief cause of the Great Revolution to have been economic……..but the elimination of costly frills was an obvious way to meet the demand for greater economies’.    

The pressure of how you were perceived by your peers also played a major role, it was no longer enough to be wealthy, the gentry desired to be seen as educated and well versed in the arts and classics, wealth alone was not enough to show status. This knowledge and understanding of the classics and the perception of taste was fed by the ‘Grand Tour’. The ‘natural’ element of the Italian renaissance and baroque garden seen on the grand tour was such an important element of the English landscape garden concept. The Italian gardens incorporated the bosco, a contrived but natural looking woodland or grove attached to the formal garden in which a path would wind. The important statement this bosco or grove was making was, look we are no longer scared of the natural landscape. There was a real juxtaposition between the formal and natural garden, the first English visitors on the grand tour to see these gardens such as the garden at Villa Lante viewed this naturalistic woodland setting attached to the formal garden and it appealed greatly to the English psyche. They saw this natural woodland and realised that it could be transposed into their country estates. This can be described as nature and art working together, the basis of the first English Landscape garden, derived from the gardens of Italy. Hobhouse describes this; ‘the appreciation of the dual role of nature and art in laying out gardens, which was to become such a part of English landscape garden theory, was one imbibed from Italy. The dream of the classical gardens of Rome and the Italian countryside was absorbed into the new era of William Kent and Capability Brown’. 

 

The Dying Gladiator at Rousham

The dying gladiator sits above the seven arched Praeneste at Rousham; he will be dying until the day he finally crumbles. This moving sculpture represents the gladiatorial games from ancient Rome; the gladiator having lost his fight has fallen, he lay’s on his shield with his sword on the ground next to him. Ancient Rome was represented in a garden by its architecture but also by its sculpture and art. Not all created in situ as this piece was, but a colossal amount of sculpture rightly or wrongly was transported back to England from the grand tour. Lord Burlington from Chiswick Park even brought back statues from Hadrian’s Villa to be displayed in his temple and Exedra. It is also considered that this sculpture could represent General Dormer, seriously injured at the Battle of Blenheim and who suffered from his wounds for the rest of his life.     

Landscape paintings were a main source of inspiration for the exponents of the new movement, artists such as Poussin, Lorrain, Rosa, Canaletto, and Dughet were all influential in shaping the English landscape movement. Pope wrote that ‘All gardening is landscape painting, just like a landscape hung up’. The landscape was in the process of becoming a composition. The artists used oils and canvas to depict the landscape, while the designers of the English Landscape movement used the countryside as their canvas inspired by these paintings. The British visitors on the ‘Grand Tour’ created a demand for paintings of the celebrated sites such as Venetian festivals, sea ports, the Roman Campagna, and classical, romantic and allegorical scenes. These paintings would become the blue print for the English landscape gardens and also the inspiration for the designers. Artists such as Lorrain and Poussin painted ‘Arcadian’ scenes in which ancient ruins and temples, cascades and ancient groves were seen. Henry Hoare’s garden at Stourhead was inspired by the work of Lorrain in which temples and ruins were seen in an idealized or romanticised classical landscape.

 

The Pantheon at Stourhead

Many gardens also told a story. Stourhead’s allegorical meaning, obvious then but not so now to modern minds, told the story from the ‘Aeneid’, by Virgil about the founding of Rome. Lorrain painted a landscape called ‘Coast View of Delos with Aeneas’ which shows the Pantheon. Other buildings in the painting are represented at Stourhead. The Pantheon represents part of the journey by Aeneas before he arrived in Italy. This illustration shows how these buildings were placed to be seen from various selected positions in the garden; they were called ‘eyecatchers’. They were also places where guests walking the garden circuit could stop to take refreshment and rest.

 

The designers of the new style no longer needed to be landscape architects in the school of Le Notre, obeying the rules of formality, mathematics and geometry but instead they designed by the rules of the painters, and informality and nature. They created pastoral scenes from the imagination.

The Gothic Temple at Stowe

This is a scene of pastoral calm. The garden also providing some agricultural use and displaying the beauty of the English countryside, the countryside brought into the garden. During Lord Cobham’s time at Stowe he had many buildings designed and built, by Vanbrugh and Kent. These buildings told many stories and also made many political statements.

 The new philosophy towards nature meant that it was now an equal in the relationship with man and was not simply there to be subjugated. Instead of the formal regularity the irregularity of nature was sought and as Jellicoe states, ‘ nature was no longer subservient to man, but a friendly and equal partner which could provide inexhaustible interest, refreshment and moral uplift; irregularity rather than regularity was proclaimed as the objective of landscape design’.

The old regime was under relentless attack, Plumptre explains, ‘By the last years of the 17^th C formal gardening in England was coming under threat from various directions. The manner in which the concept of the garden had begun to be extended beyond regimented geometric enclosures marked the beginnings of the move from garden to landscape’.  

The ha-ha at Rousham

The ha-ha is the most important invention in garden design history. Before this boundaries had to be defined by a wall, in effect still visibly enclosing a garden. The ha-ha meant the ‘concealment of bounds’, now a garden could look as if it extended into the countryside, making the garden boundary seemingly disappear. Along with the ha-ha came William Kent, Walpole said of him, ‘he leaped the fences, and saw that all nature was a garden’. Kent saw that all nature and the landscape could be brought into the garden, the borrowed landscape idea created over three hundred years ago. Clifford explains this when he says, ‘it was the making of what lay within the boundary look like what lay outside it’. Kent was the first man to ‘consult the genius of the place’.

The epithet English Landscape movement is too simple to give true and accurate meaning; we need to break down the movement into its parts. The name will always be widely used as this is the name that most people easily recognise, but the four sub-movements are the; Augustan (neoclassical), Serpentine, Picturesque (Romantic) and Landscape (eclectic).

The Augustan period (1700-1750) was the first period of the new movement and named after Emperor Augustus, and the Augustan poets who wanted to recreate the past glories of ancient Rome. This period can also be called neoclassical because the gardens emulated or at least attempted to emulate the classical landscape and architecture of Rome and ancient Greece. As David C Stuart wrote regarding the psychological pull of the classical world, ‘The world of ancient Rome has almost always exerted a powerful appeal to men unfortunate enough to have been born after its fall’. The gardens were liberally scattered with classical architecture such as temples. Also included were grottoes, statues, groves and other illusions to antiquity. The Augustan period saw gardens such as Chiswick, and Rousham created. William Kent (family name Cant) was the most influential designer and architect of this period, Rousham being without doubt the finest garden in England.  

The Palladian Bridge at Stowe

The term Palladian is taken from the 16^th century architect Andrea Palladio. Lord Burlington was one of the men responsible for the ‘neo-Palladian’ style of architecture that became the fashion in the 18^th century. This beautiful covered bridge was built to allow the family and its guests to make a circular drive around the garden. The aim of this bridge was also to support a classical feel to the garden and to provide a focal point from different positions. When viewed from the Doric arch the bridge is framed between the two arches.

The ‘Serpentine’ period (1750-1783) is predominately the most well know of the four, it was categorised by a noticeably more natural theme, this naturalisation of the landscape was considered to bring the landowner closer to God, and it would bring man and nature into peaceful coexistence thus creating harmony. The gardens in this period would be ones such as, Petworth, and Chatsworth. Any formality such as a terrace, which had survived, surrounding the main house during the Augustan period was swept away now, and the turf came like a tide to the front of the property covering everything. The main designer in this period, Lancelot Brown, was not though unwilling to add the odd temple if it suited his design, as can be seen at Petworth.

S. Harmer 2009

 

The park at Petworth

The illustration shows the grass at Petworth running right up to the house. There was once a formal garden by London and Wise but Brown removed it entirely. Brown sculpted the landscape, creating a large lake in the middle distance, and built hills from the spoil. He planted what looked like randomly grouped clumps of trees but they were in fact carefully positioned. If you look at the rolling hills in the park you will see they are sensuously shaped and resemble the soft curves of the female form, a deliberate move by Brown. All formality had gone and Brown created these serpentine shapes and lines. This period was to be eventually considered bland and boring, and Brown in many people’s eyes is either the hero or the villain of English garden design.

The ‘Picturesque’ period (1783-1813) was the third and came about as a reaction against the Serpentine period; Brown had fallen out of fashion. This period saw gardens move away from places to entertain and walk, but instead took the form of a rugged and rustic landscape with rivers running through the land, turned if possible into raging torrents, with features such as rustic bridges and cascades. The only connection the picturesque had with the desperately out of fashion baroque was that both were better viewed from height to gain the full perspective. This style of garden worked far more effectively in the north of England with the topography lending itself well, far better than in the flatter south. This period can also be called the ‘Romantic’ period; the meaning of the word in this case describes a feeling of strong emotion. The gardens were to be held in awe and wonder and the awe inspired by untamed nature.

As a reaction to Browns landscapes the Picturesque movement came to the fore. The landscape was to become ‘Romantic’ and moved away from the tameness’ of Brown. The garden was to become rough and rugged with irregularity and a natural wild aspect brought into the garden. The scene in the illustration is best viewed from height and includes a ruin creating the Picturesque image at Scotney. Rosa was known as ‘Savage’ Rosa his paintings inspired this style of design. The idea was to create torrents and crags and a general natural landscape.  The designers wanted to create a Picturesque view from each window of the associated house.

The ‘landscape’ period (1800-1900) was the last and was characterised by the landscape movement coming back around in almost a full circle. The course of action taken was to reintroduce some degree of formality back around the house but a very eclectic mix of English and European style, aesthetically this style did not always work, and did not always lend itself to any degree of harmony. The style saw the emergence of the mass carpet bedding schemes of the Victorian era and the ‘Gardenesque’ style. Designers such as Repton and Barry were to the fore and the period saw gardens such as Trentham Park.

 

Hamilton at Painshill decided for his amusement and the amusement of his guests to build a hermitage in the park and employ a hermit to live in it for seven years. If this task was undertaken successfully the hermit was to receive a fortune which today would be around £90,000. The hermit was employed and agreed to the conditions of service. He was to be given a bible, optical glasses, a mat for the floor, a pillow, an hour glass to keep the time and he was to receive water to drink and his food would come from the house. He was also to wear a goat’s hair robe and must never cut his hair, beard or nails and never leave the park. These harsh conditions took their toll, within the first month the hermit was found drunk in the local pub and sacked.

We still have over one hundred English Landscape gardens in the country, most bar Rousham underwent a series of changes with the succession of different designers. This summer take the time to visit some of them, many need your support and as at Painshill are worthy of it.