The following essay has been written by Rodney Anness BA (hons) MA, a volunteer at Scampston:
Much has been
written about England’s
greatest garden designer and many would assert, artist but what intrigues
me is what inspired him to design his gardens in the way that he did. The
initial impact of his designs was how very different they were from what
preceded them. Both the French and Baroque garden designs were intensely ‘busy’
and marked by their patterns of repeated regularity. Swirling partiers enclosed
formally planted rows of annuals. The upper stories of the adjacent noble house
were usually a very good vantage point.
In contrast,
Brown’s designs whilst also best viewed from on high could in addition be equally
appreciated from ground level. At first sight their seemingly simplistic design
appeared unsophisticated and to lack aesthetic intrigue and indeed Brown’s
detractors complained significantly, of their naturalism. Without knowing it
they had correctly identified exactly what informed Brown’s designs. However as
is now known and well understand his designs are of enormous complexity. With
remarkable prescience he sculpted out of earth, water, trees and shrubs, magnificent
views that would only come into full maturity long after his death.
A lake view at Scampston Hall
When I started to
think about what I will also term Brown as ‘artist’ in future, I recalled that
what one immediately associates with Brown’s century is of course the ‘Age of
Enlightenment’ when, mostly in Western Europe, well educated people or the so
called ‘elite’ largely abandoned the strictly spiritual in favour of secular
reason as a consequence of empirical study. They also claimed freedom of
political thought and action. The philosophers of the 18th century and
to name just a few, Frenchmen, Voltaire,
Diderot, Rousseau and Englishmen, John Locke and David Hume (I hasten to add
the last was a Scott) and not forgetting the German Immanuel Kant together in
their very different ways, influenced and gave shape to intellectual thought in
today’s societies. However in spite of their differences they all believed in
the power of the human mind to solve every problem. Brown also showed
throughout his career that he supported this belief. When viewing a new
assignment for a potential client he proclaimed that it ‘had capabilities’
which he could envisage to give the estate owner hope of the new landscape he
sought. As this usually would mean very substantial change it also required the
foresightedness of what it might look like centuries into the future. Not least
it was often considerably more expensive than the cost of changing garden
designs in the past. A man noted for his tact and persuasiveness it is a
tribute to Brown that he was able to get so many estate owners to agree to the
high costs his plans required but perhaps they realised that future maintenance
costs would be considerably lower. No more cutting the grass and hedging and
replacing sometimes thousands of annuals! Space between his trees and shrubs
could be grazed by sheep and deer all beneficially adding to the Arcadian look
they sought.
Jacques Rousseau
There are many
different facets to the Enlightenment but the French name of
le Siècle des
Lumières, lit. 'the Century of Lights'; and in German:
Aufklärung, lit. ‘a
clearing away’ gives us the general tenor of philosophical thought in Eighteen
century Europe. Like the Renaissance before
the Classical past of Greece and Rome were celebrated as the fountain head of
philosophical thought but in the 18th century an additional important
concern was the natural world which was invariably referred to simply as, ‘Nature’.
However at the beginning of the 18 century many still believed nature and the
natural world to be a place of terror and superstition and nowhere was that
more the case than the ‘Alps’. Most travelers’
were of course obliged to cross the Alps to reach Italy the essential destination for
a suitably wealthy young man, (and it was most often a man), and the
culmination of a successful Grand Tour. Edward Hymes in his 1971 biography of
Brown mentions that the 2nd Viscount Palmerstone, (his estate at Blenheim Palace
was eventually redesigned by Brown in
1768-71), had travelled to Italy
where he “completed his education which had included the almost inevitable
Grand Tour.” However at the beginning of
the 18th century, travelers crossing the
Alps drew the coach curtains to conceal
themselves from the demons and worse they believed infested the mountain passes
amongst ‘dreadful scenes of disorder of rampant Nature.’
Gin Lane by William Hogarth
However this reputation of the Alps as a place of dystopian terror gradually changed as
the century progressed partly due to a contra conception of the cosmopolitan
world of the contemporary Metropolis and the urban as being the source of all
corruption and evil. This was partly due to the writings of philosopher
Jacque Rousseau who not only shared this view of city life but he also claimed
that only in the countryside was ‘Nature’, which was he said the creation of
God and the true embodiment of a purity of life and living. Painters too responded
to this change in perceptions of landscape as a subject of value worthy of
representation. Landscape artists who were formerly low in the hierarchy of
painters whilst the most celebrated artists confined themselves to painting scenes
of History, Classical Legends and Myths and of course scenes from the Bible. It
should however be noted that such ‘History genre’ paintings also attracted the
highest prices! However the increasingly urbanization of society and incipient industrialization
which took place throughout the century helped change perceptions of the rural
alternatives. And here they sought scenes of poetic charm and calm serenity as
a contrast to the hustle and bustle of city life. And where such scenes in
nature proved difficult to find they were persuaded to remodel and constructed their
own conceptions of the Arcadian views they had so admired on their Grand Tour.
Artists
such as the Frenchman Claude Lorrain (1600-82) became the most famous
exponent of the ‘ideal landscape’ of the Classical periods of Greece and Rome.
He worked for most of his life in Italy principally in Rome and cleverly
elevates his essentially ‘landscape genre paintings by inserting, usually in
the foreground, miniature figures in classical garb to elevate his work to the
top of the hierarchy of paintings as a faux, ‘History’ work.
French artist Claude Lorrain (1600 -82)
The
Académie Royale was founded in Paris in 1684 by
the culturally ambitious Louis 14th of France and he set the new
academicians the task of filling its galleries. Claude Lorrain was by this date
one of the most famous French artists and the private owners of his work were
persuaded to sell their paintings to the Sun King. As a consequence, when the
young men of the 18th century passed through Paris
en rout to Rome
a visit to the Académie Royale became an essential part of their cultural
education. And here they will have seen Claude’s work which appeared to
encapsulate their idealized conception of ‘Arcadia’ so celebrated by the philosophers of
the Enlightenment. Where possible they bought large numbers of Claude’s work
together with a self portrait by Rome
artist, Pompeo Batoni. This was meant to impress all and sundry on their
return that they had completed the Grand Tour and were thus a cultured man. Indeed
a ‘Claude and a Batoni’ were as much a 18th century social indicator
as a stick of rock was a memento of the seaside for the urban classes in the 19th
century.
Coast View of Delos by Claude Lorrain
It can be no surprise that on their return
the former ‘Grand Tourists’ set about redesigning their gardens and estates
with new enthusiasm. And Capability Brown will surely have been infected by
their relish for all they had seen and were reminded of via Claude’s paintings.
Brown was particularly blessed in his ability to scan the potential client’s
property to see if it had possibilities for remodeling as the ex Grand Tourist
desired. Thomas Jefferson saw the results of Brown’s artistry at Blenheim and
Stowe and he wrote, ‘the canvas is of open ground, variegated with clumps of
trees distributed with taste’. That, as Hyams wrote in his biography of Brown,
‘in a dozen words sums up Brown’s art.’ Brown was also employed by the young
Viscount for advice on the architectural problems associated with giving an early
Tudor house the look of an ‘Italianate Villa.’ Brown had been the under
gardener at Stowe working under the supervision of William Kent who had been
sent to Rome by
wealthy patrons and had acquired considerable architectural skills from his
friends and fellow students. But he did not have Brown’s knowledge of
horticulture which allowed Brown to select and use the most appropriate tree,
shrubs and plants for a particular spot.
The flat ground at Scampston Hall
In addition, Brown besides being a
landscape artist was also an architect and water engineer. This allowed him to
divert as he did at Scampston Hall, rivers and create with dams serpentine
stretches of water that appear to interconnect and have the appearance of a
single river reflecting the colour of the sky. Spoil from dug out sections of
the lakes provided the basis for hillocks of rising ground essential to break
up the very flat ground at Scampston formed from part of the ancient Plain
of Pickering. In prehistoric times this was a huge lake and traces of the
dwellings that the fishermen built on stilts have been found on the periphery
of the formerly flooded area. The flat land of the estate at Scampston was a
significant problem for Brown which he solved by his excavations and clever
planting of trees and shrubs but also by incorporating the distant landscape in
particular, the Wolds to the east of the estate. This produced the multiple
view points where, through screens of trees and shrubs glimpses of the Hall or the Palladian Bridge can be seen. The scene from the Hall would be an
almost theatrical view. The land would seemingly stretch out endlessly to the
far horizon with the replanting providing the receding ‘wings’ of a new Arcadia
artistically sculpted by ‘Capability Brown’.
The Pantheon at Stourhead
The influence of Capability Brown and his
garden designs spread throughout Europe. By
1811 26 year old Prince Hermann von Puckler-Muskau inherited an estate of
nearly 200 square miles in Saxony and a
smaller estate in Branitz. He was determined to carry out improvements and
create a park on the ‘English model.’ But he was severely frustrated by also
inheriting his father’s debts But even
earlier in 1787 Friedrich Wilhelm II directed the German Royal Gardener George
Steiner to redesign the garden
of Charlottenburg Schloss
in the ‘English landscape style.’And his influence continues.
Conversation in the park Charlottenburg Schloss
Very recently art historian and cultural
writer, Lily le Lebrun wrote a long piece in the Art Quarterly the house
magazine of the Art Fund on Brown’s influence on modern artists today. She
traced his influence on artists such as Richard Wilson, Paul Sandby and JMW
Turner through to land artists today such as Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy
and Richard Long. Arguably the fame of these present day artists has
discernable traces of Brown’s designs not least in the ability of these
artists, just as Brown did to ‘read’ the landscape and exploit it aesthetically.
In 1783 Horace Walpole writing to a friend of
the death of Lancelot Brown, claimed, “Your Dryads must go into black gloves
Madame, their father-in-law, Lady Nature’s second husband, is dead.” And surely
this was indeed an appropriate reaction to the news of Brown’s demise for England and much of Western
Europe of this great, garden, artist.
The Lakes at Scampston
