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Evolution of Landscape Architecture in Britain

By Vickie Rozell

Originally published in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley Playbill for Arcadia

Most of the 18th century was The Age of Reason, a time when reason was valued over feelings, things that were logical and predictable considered more beautiful than those that showed individuality or creativity. From poetry to landscape design, Classical ideas were considered superior, spurring a renaissance of Greek and Roman ideals, myths, and design, which yielded artwork depicting Classical stories with little emotion and landscapes in which symmetry and geometrical patterns were paramount.


This rational ideal began to break down in the mid 1700s as upheaval and revolutions raised notions of individual freedom. Artistic disciplines began to reject the rigidity of Classicism and a new aesthetic arose, one that emphasized nature, the self, and the importance of feelings and emotions over reason and logic. This eventually led to the development of the great Romantic poets—Wordsworth, Shelley, and Lord Byron, whose work quickly became the prototype for the Romantic ideal.


Prior to the French Revolution, people returning from “Grand Tours” of Europe, were inspired by paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Salvator Rosa, and Claude Lorraine, whose works featured sweeping natural vistas in which figures seemed secondary to the overall affect of the painting. This influenced landscape design, which during the second half of the 18 century changed from carefully sculpted Classical hedges and topiaries to a more Romantic style championed by landscape gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1715-1783). He used the existing character of the land, the “genius of the place,” “correcting” as necessary to bring it closer to his ideal. He promulgated asymmetrical clumps of trees, winding bodies of water, great expanses of grass, and a “natural style” that made the grounds and surrounding countryside appear to be one. Fences were rejected in favor of “natural” boundaries, including the ha-ha mentioned in the play, a large ditch that kept deer and sheep from going astray without interrupting the view.


Brown’s designs in turn gave rise to an even more Romantic style, christened “Picturesque,” whose proponents included Humphrey Repton and Richard Payne Knight, inspirations for Mr. Noakes in Arcadia. The idea of a garden like a picture first found its way into print in 1794, so it existed side by side with the Romantic idea, and, in fact, there was much division among the upper class as to which was more desirable.


The Picturesque aesthetic, which is reflected in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, and the early work of J.M.W. Turner, encourages even more irregularity and emotion, including “ruined” structures, romantic wilderness, and wild, sometimes Gothic touches. The idea was to create a place where “wild nature” could be enjoyed in safety. The clumped trees of “Capability” Brown were freed to more random patterns, artificial ruins and rustic hermitages were created, waterfalls built, and anything that engendered emotion was encouraged from craggy outcrops to twisted trees.


Stoppard mirrors these changes with the landscaping of Arcadia’s Sidley Park. It was once a classical garden which was transformed by someone like Brown into a Romantic landscape and, as the play begins is being transformed again into a scene from a Gothic novel. As Noakes and Lady Croom disagree about the fate of the garden, so did much of upper-class England disagree about the transformation of both land and art from Romantic to Picturesque.


© Vickie Rozell, All Rights Reserved

Reproduction only with permission


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