Picturesque context theory

The picturesque

Late eighteenth century contextual theorists held that landscapes should be designed with a picturesque 'transition' from the works of man to the works of nature. The aim of the picturesque, as shown in [Fig 3.12], was to create a transition from art to nature. Normally, the transition progressed from a geometrical area near the house, through a serpentine park in the manner of Capability Brown, to an irregular natural area which formed a backdrop. The theory is known as 'picturesque' because it was inspired by the idea of organising a landscape, like a picture, with a transition from foreground to middleground to background. I used the name Transition Style for layouts based on this idea in a book on English Garden Design: history and styles since 1650 (Turner, 1986). It is based on landscape painting and draws from the whole eighteenth century landscape movement. The Australian example can serve to explain what guidance might be obtained from picturesque theory concerning a proposal for a new church and forest. The design guidance would depend upon the stage in the transition which the site was taken to occupy. Were it in the first stage, the proposal would probably have been accepted. Humphry Repton, as an enthusiastic advocate of Chinese and American sections in English gardens, could hardly have objected to an Australian garden, replete with Eucalypts. But he would have wanted it to be near the house so that it would form part of the 'domain of art'. Richard Payne Knight was explicit about the desirability of planting exotics in the man-made part of an estate: The bright acacia, and the vivid plane, The rich laburnum, with its golden chain... But better are these gaudy scenes display'd From the high terrace or rich balustrade; In the middle stage of a transition, Repton and Knight would probably have permitted the new church but advised native trees instead of Eucalypts. Knight expressed his planting philosophy as follows: Let then of oak your general masses rise, Wher'er the soil its nutriment supplies: But if dry chalk and flints, or thirsty sand, Compose the substance of your barren land, Let the light beech its gay luxuriance shew, And o'er the hills its brilliant verdure strew. (Turner 1986: 108-110) In the third stage of the transition, wild nature herself, neither church nor Eucalypts would have been permitted. If authority were needed for this position, they need only have poited to Salvator Rosa's paintings. The idea of forming a graded transition from art to nature r ema ined at the heart of English garden design from 1793 until 1947. When the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act imposed a squeeze on garden size, the transition idea leapt the garden wall and occupied the country. Planners became enthused with the notion that towns should be tightly urban in character, and surrounded by a Brownian agricultural hinterland, itself giving way to wildly irregular National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Strict planning controls were imposed on developments in the green belt, so that towns would become denser and the spaces between buildings could develop a 'townscape character', with urban squares and circuses like those of renaissance towns.