Picture Perfect: Gardening in the Age of Revolution (1780-1818)

We will investigate how the English Landscape gardens of designers like Capability Brown came under attack for being bland and unimaginative, and lacking in ‘emotion’. Critics wanted landscapes that inspired feelings of awe and wonder, and even terror in the observer, or which resembled paintings by great classical artists like Claude, Poussin or Rosa. It was the beginning of the age of tourism when the wildernesses and mountainous areas of Britain were “discovered” and when visiting country houses and gardens became popular. And as always there was a reaction which found its champion in Humphry Repton.