LARCH 060

Tuesday, February 23rd, 1999
Announcements: none

Lecture notes:

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE SCHOOL (18C):

Land/environment:

• Agricultural Landscape
• Possessed many Baroque ideas
• Pastoral/idealized landscape: farmland, version of paradise
• Nature's aesthetic (picture), health, simulating ideas through what you see
• Tasteful

Socio-cultural milieu:

• Philosophers, poets, painters--used extensions of their ideas/dreams in landscaping
• Politics, partitioning (act of enclosure for ownership), Agricultural experimentation
• Satires about controlled vegetation (Alexander Pope)

Design Expression:

• Serpentine roadways (arbitrary, curvy) and paths, meant so you don't experience a view twice
• Tree Clusters, turf--extend the vegetation
• Ha-has (invisible fences), folies--ancient structures, some artifacts are still in preruined states

• Mirrorlike, naturalistic water
• Controlled views, scenes
• Hampton Court--design that had ideas from Versailles (goosefoot intersection)
• Big orientation on art, understanding painting, intellectual refinement, portraits and landscapes, poetry, etc....
• Combined poetry and painting with gardening---thought of gardening as a "landscape painting"
• Idea of taking care of nature
• Landscape ought to contain groves of trees, bridges, mirrorlike water, paths, as seen in paintings
• English had a love/hate relationship with the French
• Big chunk of land with possibly a mansion, many trees and grazing animals in background create a typical landscape for the wealthy
• Example: Stourhead:(earliest stages)--romantic, naturalistic, narrative told in the landscape, lake was a focal point, follow the path along the lake past various structures to the mansion (this tells an allegory), stimulates the imagination
• William Kent was a subscriber of English Landscape School
• Example: Estate at Stowe: dominant geometric zxis, Kent was head gardener within pathways make irregular structures, Kent eroded geometry and made it more natural, tress made up the outside circuit. Over time, temples/follies were removed. Impacted by Lancelot "Capability" Brown who did away with the framework and finished after Kent died. he eliminated the geometry, continually changing views through pathways, shade and shadowing, pasteur
• Example: Blenheim:occupied by Earl of Marlboro, donated by Queen Anne, had a strong axis approaching mansion. Brown changed it to entrance throught the community of Woodstock, entry gate-"most beautiful view in all of England", ha-has, Brown resolved creation of damns to appear naturalistic, loop with remnant follies. Had a good record of Brown's intentions, sheep paths