Humphry Repton’s Landscape Gardens (1788-1811): The End of Arcadia?

Alexia Martin

p. 35-41


Texte intégral

1Great gardens are always representations of nostalgia, a sentimental return to the golden age. To get there, reconciliation with Nature is necessary. But only art can lead to this new-found harmony. The English can pride themselves on their great contribution to the arts through their landscape gardens, designed throughout the eighteenth century by William Kent first, then Lancelot Brown and lastly Humphry Repton from 1788 to 1811. The best known is Lancelot “capability” Brown, who is renowned for his naturalistic approach and aimed at improving the native scenery of places, as in Blenheim and Longleat for example.1 The bare beauty of lawns, water and trees are reminiscent of another world, another time. And indeed, a Brown park is a whole world, utopian in concept, offering a kind of perfection to the senses.

2If Humphry Repton is often considered as Brown’s successor, his career shows that he shifted from a mostly Brownian approach to a compromise with the requirements of a changing population with different social values. One quote by Repton illustrates this compromise: “The art [of landscape gardening] can only be advanced and perfected by the united powers of the landscape painter and the practical gardener2.”

3This paper proposes to examine the transition from the traditional eighteenth century School of landscape gardening to the sharply different style of early Victorian gardens. Humphry Repton perfectly illustrates this transition, as Brown’s successor but also as a major contributor to the end of the myth of the English garden.

“Capability” Brown’s idealized Arcadian landscape (1750-1783)

4The list of stately homes which were planned or altered by Capability Brown runs to well over a hundred, among which Chatsworth, Blenheim, Burghley, Longleat, Petworth, Harewood, Hampton Court, Warwick Castle. Brown’s name will always be associated with a major revolution in taste. Indeed, at the opening of the eighteenth century, the dominant force in landscape design was Andre Le Notre, chief garden designer for Louis XIV at Versailles. The most popular gardens were the French, Italian, and Dutch formal gardens executed to exhibit bilateral symmetry and geometrical order. In this style, the part of the garden closest to the palace or house was handled architecturally, like another room-extension of the house itself.

5Lancelot Brown rejected this deliberate attention to geometrical order for an equally deliberate attention to the appearance of natural disorder. He therefore abolished walls, made straight lines wavy, got rid of circular basins and fountains and almost got rid of flowers. This minimalist landscape also represented a move away from the classical world, insofar as Brown avoided literary associations and architectural devices such as temples, statues and urns. By contrast, these were highly prized by William Kent at the beginning of the century.

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6Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, artistic sensibility largely rested on the English’s love for Italy and the admiration of ancient Rome. All the usual objects of classical Arcadia became the stocks-in-trade of poets and painters, such as Nicolas Poussin or Claude Lorrain. These well-known painters depicted an ideal, pastoral world with characters such as shepherds, gods and other mythological characters. It is interesting to note that Brown’s gardens were often described as recreations of Claude Lorrain’s paintings. This comes down to what Alexander Pope wrote about “all gardening [being] landscape painting3”.

7If Brown was certainly influenced by this artistic context, his gardens became, in turn, a rich source of inspiration for artists. This is precisely what he intended: “Our ideas on gardening and place making […] will supply all the elegance and all the comforts which Mankind wants in the country and (I will add) if right, will be exactly fit for the Owner, the Poet and the Painter4.”

8One of the best-known examples of artistic tribute to Brown’s designs is William Turner’s paintings of Petworth. Moreover, a lot of poems were written in praise of nature as improved by Brown. A few of them were somewhat sarcastic – especially at the end of Brown’s career – such as the fake tribute by the poet William Cowper who called Brown “The omnipotent magician”: “Brown appears, He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise5.”

9Brown’s approach can be seen as artistic insofar as he was interested in the immediate effect of natural elements on our senses, making it clear that he wanted to produce an emotional response in the individual. And this was something quite new, the discovery in Thomas Whately’s words that “scenes of nature have a power to affect our imagination and our sensibility6”.

10If Brown’s clients were fond of this artistic approach, his gardens soon took on an ideological meaning, even without Brown being particularly aware of it. His clients, mainly landed aristocrats, were Tories and Whigs. The Whigs favoured him most because they liked his way of improving England’s natural scenery, the lack of formality of his designs and the often associated Palladian houses. All of this came to symbolise the Whig values of patriotism, democracy and freedom, to be opposed to the tyranny over Nature represented by the “jardins à la française” of Louis XIV and other European absolute monarchs.

Humphry Repton and the compromise of practicality (1788-1811)

11Humphry Repton is often presented as Brown’s successor. And indeed, he took up a great deal of his style, especially at the beginning of his career. His admiration for Brown is recurrent in his writings: “Under Brown, we were taught that nature was to be our model and that Nature seldom moved in a straight line7.” Like Brown, he saw his art as an imitation of Nature. He was sensitive to contrasts in the shapes of trees, of light and dark, of colours and texture, all of which he tried to convey in his extensive theoretical writings and in his unique Red Books, which contained his ideas and watercolours to show “before” and “after” designs. In a letter to a friend, he claims this pictorial approach to gardening (in French): “les arbres, les rochers et les eaux et les fleurs, ce sont là mes pinceaux, mes toiles, mes couleurs8”. This painter’s sensibility goes together with a poetic feeling towards nature, as shown in this quote: “There is perhaps nothing more reviving and delightful, than the sudden effect of a summer’s shower, after a long continuance of dry weather: then all nature seems revived; the ground and the plants send forth new and grateful odours; the flowers, the birds, the insects, all join to express their pleasure9…” However, he didn’t copy Brown blindly and gradually took a different path. After a few years’ practice, he started comparing a naked lawn with an unfurnished room: “We look for carpets in one and flowers in the other10.” This conception is clearly opposed to Brown’s, who liked vast stretches of lawn, punctuated by a few single trees or small clusters of plants.

12In practical terms, Repton gradually reintroduced some elements from the seventeenth century designs, namely some symmetry and formality around the house and in flower-gardens. He also reintroduced people and buildings into the landscape and made far greater use of flowers than Brown. For example, whereas the house seemed to be “lost” in Brown’s gardens, Repton introduced a gradual link between the park and the house, by means of terraces and ornamental gardens around the house. In this way, he gave the garden the same features of artificiality as the building, as in Ashridge House or Endsleigh Gardens for instance. Repton himself, in discussing the two schools, said:

“I do not profess either Le Nôtre or Brown, but, selecting beauties from the style of each, to adopt so much of the grandeur of the former as may accord with a palace, and so much of the grace of the latter as may call forth the charms of natural landscape. Each has its proper situation, and good taste will make fashion subservient to good sense11.”

13The evolution of Humphry Repton’s career—a gradual domestication of the estate—illustrates changing social values. Whereas Brown’s clients were almost exclusively landed aristocrats who dominated the country socially and politically, Repton’s time saw the rise of a new middle-class. Their estates were smaller, which was certainly less adapted to Brownian designs, with their large parks and extensive views. Then, they were eager for further innovations reflecting their own ideals, among which human domination of Nature. Finally, most of them were successful merchants who wanted to obtain value for money and attached great importance to “convenience”.

14Repton complied with their demands. For instance, in Longleat, first made by Brown in 1757, he insisted on a connection between the kitchen and the kitchen gardens, for an easier access to fruit and vegetables, and also a connection between the stables and the flower garden, fort its manure. By contrast, Brown had banished them at a distance to have a naked lawn around the house.

15Repton’s pragmatism is obvious when we leaf through his “Red Books”, which place great emphasis on financial matters, alongside practical recommendations and drawings. It is interesting to note that Repton acted as a consultant, charging for his Red Books and often leaving his clients to arrange the actual execution. Besides, the flattering references to his clients’ good taste, which are generally found in the introductions of his Red Books, underline his good business sense.

16This also illustrates the rationality of his approach, which made him object to all extremes in art. Hence his rejection, at the end of his career, of the two contending trends in garden design. First, the “reigning rage for Nature” by what he called “Brown’s illiterate followers”. It was a style which drove Brown’s ideas to the extreme, making paths curve excessively for instance. The second trend is the opposite movement, the picturesque, defended by Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price’s. It was a reaction against the smoothness of Brown’s landscapes which, according to Knight and Price, lacked the sublime and roughness of an ideal landscape.

17One quote illustrates Repton’s in-between view of landscape gardening at the height of his career: “I have discovered that utility must often take the lead of beauty, and convenience be preferred to the picturesque effect, in the neighbourhood of man’s habitation12.” If Repton’s gardens incorporated elements from the pre-eighteenth century style, they also hinted at the future.

A step towards modernity

18A number of trends set by Repton became very popular features throughout the nineteenth century. First, to draw attention on the area around the house, he advised to surround the house with “period” or “fashion” gardens, which became a must-have in the Victorian era. These were pleasure-grounds consisting of several areas of different styles and periods: the ancient garden or the American garden for instance13. There were also terrace-walks and flower gardens in which he introduced rare plants, mostly from America. The fashion of period gardens and foreign gardens led up to a general eclecticism in nineteenth century designs.

19Repton also thought that the garden should be invited into the house. That’s why he advocated French windows and a conservatory attached to some room of the house. Conservatories became very popular throughout the century to grow rare and new plants. This reflects an increasing tendency to control Nature through knowledge, with classification, itemization and science: we’re far from Arcadia!

20Therefore, in the nineteenth century, Brown’s idealization of nature gave way to plots in which as many plants as possible should be grown as perfectly as possible, a design and a philosophy which are not unlike Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This led to a museum-approach to gardening, confirmed by the development of John Claudius Loudon’s “gardenesque” style (1832) in which plants were placed on their own as in a gallery, so that their specific characteristics should be seen from every angle. Since the prevailing idea was that gardens should not mimic nature, the gardenesque offered a solution by introducing exotic plants (non-native) and abstract (unnatural) layouts.

21That is the reason why this new style was sometimes described as the demise of landscape gardening. This coincides with a series of criticisms of Brown’s work (who had died by them) because he was seen as symbolizing the privileges of the landed aristocracy in which the greater part of the population had no share. According to John Claudius Loudon and his contemporaries, gardens were for everyone, whether at home or in public spheres—with the rise of public parks.

22Eventually, there was no striking stylistic innovation in Victorian gardens; what was different was the aesthetic and moral approach of landowners. The ostentation of one’s social status increasingly went through a display of convenience, luxuries or knowledge, rather than artistic sensibility at Brown’s time. This trend influenced Repton and was further adopted by Loudon for whom “the gardenesque style […] is calculated for displaying the art of the gardeners14”. And indeed, plant collecting was a matter of relentless competition at that time, especially colourful and conspicuous exotics. That’s why the motivations of Victorian garden owners can be sometimes appear as superficial, insofar as the ostentation of convenience and wealth prevailed over deeper artistic intentions.

Conclusion

23The work of Humphry Repton perfectly illustrates the change from an aesthetical approach to the more visual and scientific aims of the following gardens. Unlike Brown, Repton’s work was not interpreted for ideological intentions; his main focus was on visual effects and convenience. Eventually, he stood for a certain common sense, which had become the ideal to achieve at that time. Over the Georgian and Victorian periods, Brownian landscapes, where man’s work was disguised, were replaced by gardens which highlighted the triumph of Art and Science over Nature. What’s more, Brown’s gardens were frequently altered to suit the new ideals. One may conclude by stating that changes in garden styles in the nineteenth century are neither progress nor decline, but the result of the longings of a changing society, for whom the garden as an image of a better world meets that of a successful social life.

Bibliographie

Brown Jane, The Omnipotent Magician: LancelotCapability Brown (1716-1783), London, Chatto and Windus, 2011.

Hunt John Dixon and Willis Peter, The Genius of the Place: the English Landscape Garden, 1620-1820, 2nd ed., Cambridge, MIT Press, 1988.

Repton Humphry, An Enquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening, with some Observations on its Theory and Practice, London, Farnborough, Gregg, 1969 [1806].

Repton Humphry, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, London, Bensley and son, New York, Garland Pub., 1982 [1816].

Repton Humphry, The Art of Landscape Gardening, including Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, London, W. Bulmer and Co, London, Archibald Constable, 1907 [1794].

Rogger André, Landscape of Taste: The Art of Humphry Repton’s Red Books, London, Routledge, 2008.

Stroud Dorothy, Humphry Repton, London, Country Life, 1962.

Notes de bas de page

1Lancelot Brown became known as “Capability” because of his fondness of speaking of a country estate having a great “capability” for improvement.

2Repton Humphry, Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, London, W. Bulmer & Co, 1794.

3Pope Alexander, Of False Taste. An Epistle to Richard Earl of Burlington, third ed., London, L. Gilliver, 1731.

4Letter to Revd Thomas Dyer of Marylebone, 1775 (quoted by Stroud Dorothy, Capability Brown, London, Faber & Faber, 1984).

5Cooper William, The Task: A Poem, in Six Books, London, J. Johnson, 1785.

6Whately Thomas, Observations on Modern Gardening, London, West and Hughes, 1801, p. 87.

7Repton Humphry, Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape gardening, London, Bensley and son, 1816, p. 173.

8Letter to Norton Nicholls, April 15th 1789 (in French).

9Repton Humphry, “Fragment XX”, ibid., p. 100.

10Repton Humphrey, An Enquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening, with some Observations on its Theory and Practice, London, printed for J. Taylor, 1806, p. 13. Similarly, he compares a bare-banked lake with a looking-glass without a frame.

11Repton Humphrey, Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, London, J. Taylor, 1803, p. 163.

12Ibid., p. 57.

13In Ashridge House, Repton designed 15 different styles of gardens.

14The Gardener’s Magazine, 1837, in which John C. Loudon introduced the term “gardenesque” for the first time.


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