The Landscape Garden

The 18th-century landscape garden movement in England and on the Continent developed new powers of expression and artistry which eclipsed those of earlier examples. Drawing extensively on literary and pictorial sources (the ‘sister arts’), the more illustrious ‘landskips’ adapted from them narrative and other artistic devices which combine to produce aesthetically pleasing effects. In tandem with the arts in general developments can be identified among the works selected here, ranging from classicism to the cult of sensibility, an early form of romanticism, which brought with it such features as the ‘picturesque’ and a heightened appeal to the emotions of the (usually solitary) garden visitor as ‘audience’. In the finest examples the expressive and the emblematic modes alternate and while allegory is often not far away the range and scope of reference and ingenious integration of the artistic elements bring these into the range of ‘total works of art’.