The historical roots of ‘aesthetics’ in landscape architecture: an introduction

Introduction

What is the role of history in landscape architecture? Does history teach us something about the position of gardens,

and by extension landscape architecture, in our culture? Even the fact that by understanding the roots of landscape

architecture in history, we can have a critical outlook on the present seems to be rather uncommon in landscape

architecture today. Similarly, inthe fear for the new landscape (de angst voor het nieuwe landschap) the Dutch

landscape architect Han Lörzing urges designers to be less conservative and more positive towards modern

interventions. Part of a commonly held uncritical attitude — as Lörzing rightly observes — is related to the endless

copying of design principles from what he calls the ‘English landscape style’ with its meandering pathways as being

more natural.1 Yet considering the history of garden making as a series of ‘styles’ such as the ‘English landscape style’,

betrays more about how designers look at history than it tells about the actual history of garden making.

Beyond seeing historical gardens merely as a succession of styles, the history of garden making can also teach us how

our own ideas about what is supposed to be ‘new’, ‘modern’, ‘nature’, ‘aesthetics’ or even the very idea of ‘landscape’

are in fact culturally determined, even if we somehow assume to stand above this. Far from being a sterile matter,

history can thus help us to critically understand our own unchallenged assumptions, their emergence in history and

their consequences. One period, the eighteenth century or the ‘Age of the Enlightenment’, is particularly important in

this regard. Over the course of this century an almost 180 degree reversal in thinking took place that profoundly

altered the position of gardens in our culture and the ideals to which they are conceived. Likewise for eighteenth-

century art history Paul Oskar Kristeller in a classical article stressed that:

The fundamental importance of the eighteenth century in the history of aesthetics and of art criticism is

generally recognized. To be sure, there has been a great variety of theories and currents within the last two

hundred years that cannot be easily brought under one common denominator. Yet all the changes and

controversies of the more recent past presuppose certain fundamental notions which go back to that classical

century of modern aesthetics. It is known that the very term ‘Aesthetics’ was coined at that time … . It is also

generally agreed that such dominating concepts of modern aesthetics as taste and sentiment, genius,

originality and creative imagination did not assume their definite modern meaning before the eighteenth

century.2

Notwithstanding the central role of the 18th century, it is important to note that these changes are also indebted to a

gradual process that occurred over the course of several centuries. The 16th-century Renaissance garden, for instance,

saw the craft of garden making being replaced by garden design as separated from implementation.3 Yet the general

tendency to interpret the Renaissance garden as an expression of aesthetic sensibility highlights the enduring

importance of the 18th century when ‘aesthetics’ first emerged as a new term. As Edward Wright and Raffaella Fabiani

Giannetto have shown, the interpretation of the Renaissance garden according to formal criteria and stylistic categories

sits uneasily with the writings about gardens during that period.4 The 18th century, indeed, saw the displacement of a

classical idea about beauty and the doctrine of ut pictura poesis, as in painting so is poetry. In this discourse painting

and poetry share the same content and purpose, since they both ascribe to one humanistic ideal.

The critics observed in language unmistakably Aristotelian that painting like poetry was an imitation of nature, by

which they meant human nature, and human nature not as it is, but, in Aristotle’s phrase, as it ought to be, ‘raised’, as

a modern writer has well expressed it, ‘above all that is local and accidental, purged of all that is abnormal and

eccentric, so as to be in the highest sense representative’.5

That the doctrine of ut pictura poesis is relevant to the study of garden history, will come as no surprise to garden

historians. Gardens, too, were proclaimed to be an imitation of nature, considering ‘Nature’ not only as the material

world itself, but thus also as the essential quality of something or the force that directs it.6 Allusions to painterly art are

well known in the context of eighteenth-century landscape gardens, as well as the influence of pastoral poetry.

Unsurprisingly, it was precisely at the time when a modern conception of beauty took the upper hand that the doctrine

of ut pictura poesis came under attack and the dialogue between gardens and the sister arts was silently fading away.

But the parallel between the arts and garden making is no superficial one between mere resemblances of different arts,

but has profoundly altered how we came to consider gardens within our culture. If a work of art is considered to be

something that stands as inherently different from any practical activities, or even something that stands above any

moral or ethical concerns, then how would this affect the position of garden making in our culture and the ideals to

which gardens are conceived?

Several fragmented aspects of this change in cultural values are already known. The shift from ‘emblematic’ to

‘expressive’ gardening in the eighteenth century is well rehearsed, yet the narrative seems to be a bit more

complicated than that. To understand the emergence of this new world view in garden history, this contribution will not

be focusing on a single aspect that is incontestably clear, but will look for the underlying changes in cultural values that

profoundly influenced a whole generation of garden making. The story ends in France at the period around 1800, when

a new conception of beauty was fully emerging. It is, as we shall see, no coincidence that ‘landscape architecture’ both

as a term and a distinctive profession was invented at that period. Precisely around that time the term ‘landscape’

underwent a dramatic shift in meaning — before 1800 it would have been impossible to invoke the term ‘landscape

architecture’. Contemporary landscape architecture is still indebted to these changes that occurred around 1800 and

have their roots in the eighteenth century.

The role of the ancients reconsidered Whether considering a modern conception of ‘aesthetics’ that gradually displaced the position beauty once enjoyed in

classical and Renaissance thought, we are unavoidably drawn towards the beginning of the eighteenth century. This is

when a first significant shift towards modern aesthetics is encountered following the period of 1680–1715 when strict

imitation or ‘mimesis’ was increasingly called into question. Paul Hazard considered this period to be the crisis of the

European conscience: any dogma as to whether the ancients should be the definite guiding principles or if they could

be equaled or even surpassed by the moderns, could now become a matter of discussion.7 In the case of gardens this

quarrel between the ancients and the moderns was already apparent in the period of 1680–1715, but we are here

concerned with the period afterwards when a distinctively modern impulse entered the discussion on garden making.

At this period following 1715, when this dispute at first sight seems to have settled, neither side had really won;

instead, literature and the arts remained firmly in the grip of the ancients, while science and philosophy working by

accumulation, were won by the moderns.8

The consequences of this continuing dialogue or quarrel are intriguing, since garden making is not only an art form in a

limited sense, but also a practical activity that has its own ethical consequences. So perhaps arguments from both

sides — the ancients and the moderns, the arts and the sciences — could be combined in the context of gardens. We

will therefore look at the early landscape garden as it emerged in England during the first half of the eighteenth

century as being indebted to this modern urge of looking at the environment, but also being possible because it

resonated with older ideas about beauty. One of those who tried to apply his new, or so-called modern, insights to

gardening was Joseph Addison (1672–1719), whose writings have even been claimed to be the true starting point of

modern aesthetics by Jerome Stolnitz.9 In the case of Joseph Addison the most significant influence on his

contributions was the philosophy of John Locke as Addison explicitly acknowledged in one of his essays:

I have here supposed that my reader is acquainted with that great modern discovery which is at present universally

acknowledged by all the enquirers into natural philosophy … . As this is a truth which has been proved incontestably by

many modern philosophers … the English reader may find it in the eighth chapter of the second book of Mr.

Locke’sEssay on Human Understanding.10

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) Locke postulated a revolutionary new conception of the human

psychology whereby experience originated from sense perception and the reflection of the mind on ideas. No longer

was there a pre-given reality of innate values, but the emphasis was placed on perception through the senses. While

Locke’s attitude towards classical beauty has been judged to fall between a calculated indifference and even

hostility,11 the application of these principles to gardening was nonetheless compelling. As Addison now praised the

perceptive visual qualities of the countryside, ‘a beautiful Prospect’, he could also suggest that one could make this into

a garden by improving these visual qualities and also retaining the productive benefit of the existing situation, contrary

to making it into a purely ornamental layout such as parterres. In one of the most celebrated paragraphs in garden

history he compared this new idea with a ‘landskip’ (a represented landscape) — a term that was at that time still

associated exclusively with painterly art.

It might, indeed, be of ill Consequence to the Publick, as well as unprofitable to private Persons, to alienate so

much Ground from Pasturage, and the Plow, in many Parts of a Country that is so well peopled, and cultivated

to a far greater Advantage. But why may not a whole Estate be thrown into a kind of Garden by frequent

Plantations, that may turn as much to the Profit, as the Pleasure of the Owner? … Fields of Corn make a

pleasant Prospect, and if the Walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural Embroidery

of the Meadows were helpt and improved by some small Additions of Art, and the several Rows of Hedges set

off by Trees and Flowers, that the Soil was capable of receiving, a Man might make a pretty Landskip of his own

Possessions.12

Addison was surely no isolated case in thinking about gardens this way. John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) had in 1709

already pleaded to retain the ruins of the Woodstock manor at Blenheim since it gives rise to ‘a lively and pleasant

reflection’ and is ‘One of the most agreeable objects that the best of Landskip painters can invent’.13 In Ichnographia

Rustica Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) admitted how his conceptions about ‘rural and natural gardening’ were indebted

to the writings of Joseph Addison. Switzer even cited a considerable amount of text by Addison in which he describes

the qualities of greatness in ‘nature’ such as in mountains as distinctive from ‘beauty’ since ‘greatness’ evocates a

‘Delightful Stillness’ in the mind and an ‘Amazement in the Soul’.14 But considering the concept of ‘greatness’ as

distinct from ‘beauty’ signifies a break with the past; it meant that ‘beauty’ was no longer considered to be a

homogenous concept. Instead, taking sense perception as the basic reality marked the recognition that different

external stimuli gave different sensations to the mind. So Addison and other writers from that moment onwards

distinguish greatness, or what would later be referred to as the sublime, from beauty to account for these differences.

Besides this well-known pair throughout the eighteenth century, Addison also coined ‘strangeness’, as something which

is uncommon and gives rise to pleasing reflections on the mind.

But although the transition towards landscape gardening is clearly indebted to sense perception, all these early claims

for landscape gardening cannot be equated with ‘aesthetics’ in a purely modern sense. First, while the combination of

gardening and agriculture in the writings of Joseph Addison and Stephen Switzer are generally considered as early

advocates of the landscape garden, they are equally an extension of established ideas about the ‘art of gardening’ as a

dialogue between the higher ideals of beauty and the practical aspects of gardening such as agriculture.15 Second,

although the sense perception was clearly initiated with the emergence of the landscape garden, the conception of

beauty with these gardens was still decisively different from the later manifestations of the landscape gardens, such as

in the hands of Lancelot Brown (1716–1783). As Marjorie Nicolson argues, the idea of ‘greatness’ in the time of Joseph

Addison was still rooted in theological assumptions about the universe.16 So, in other words, the use of ‘greatness’ or

the ‘sublime’ did not refer to merely the visual appearance of something, but also the meaning that was ascribed to it.

Like the sublime, the usage of the ‘picturesque’ was also remarkably different from its visual bias at the end of the

eighteenth century. Alexander Pope (1688–1744), for instance, invoked the term ‘picturesque’ to signify or highlight a

part of a text which was proper for a painting. Yet this painterly analogy had less, if anything, to do with purely visual

concerns; it rather corresponded to the theme and meaning found in the historical genre of paintings, as John Dixon

Hunt has emphasized.17 More important, perhaps, is the concept of nature, since gardens were considered to be a

representation of ‘Nature’. So when Stephen Switzer referred to a place where ‘nature is truly imitated’,18 this was not

some natural scenery free from any human influence. Instead, he referred to Wray Wood: a part of Castle Howard with

fountains, statues and urns scattered throughout the wood; the place representing nature in an idealized

form.19 Earlier John Dryden (1631–1700) also stated that it was the purpose of the arts to ‘Correct and amend the

common Nature, and to represent it as it was first created without fault’.20 Similarly, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd

Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) did not refer to untamed nature at all, but to how different characters in gardens

related to ‘Nature’.

I shall no longer resist the Passion growing in me for Things of a natural kind; where neither Art nor the Conceit

or Caprice of man has spoil’d their genuine Order, by breaking in upon that primitive State. Even the rude

Rocks, the mossy Caverns, the irregular unwrought Grotto’s and broken Falls of Waters, with all the horrid

Graces of the Wilderness it-self, as representing [emphasis added] Nature more, will be the more engaging,

and appear with a Magnificence far beyond the formal Mockery of Princely Gardens.21

Third, while the composition of the landscape garden could be described as modern, the early landscape gardens

simultaneously also expressed striking affinities with the ‘ancients’. In Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711), he

advocated for ‘simplicity’ as being the ‘taste of the ancients in their gardens’.22 And when Pope created his garden at

Twickenham, it became, indeed, less confined to an overall formal structure, but equally important, it included several

historical evocations such as a grotto, literary inscriptions, a temple, classical statues and an obelisk. Later on, Lord

Burlington would instruct William Kent (1685–1748), with the advice of Pope, to create a similar garden at Chiswick

parallel to the revival of Palladian architecture. When Richard Bradley (1688–1732) referred to Chiswick in A General

Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening, he could now praise this garden for being a so-called example of antique

gardening.

But the parallel of these early landscape gardens with the gardens of the ancients was open for speculation, despite

their obvious resonance with pastoral poetry and allegorical landscape paintings. So when Robert Castell was

supported by Lord Burlington (1694–1753) to write The Villas of the Ancients Illustrated it was clearly Burlington’s

intention to articulate the continuity between the ancients and the early landscape gardens such as Chiswick. In

Castell’s description of the Roman magistrate Pliny the Younger’s garden, he took into account not only the formal

gardens themselves, but the surrounding estate as well. In doing so he could argue that a large part of the irregular

countryside had been deliberately retained, or even refined, in the juxtaposition of formal garden layouts; and like

Joseph Addison he now also compared the beauty of the countryside with a ‘landskip’ (a painting).

When Chiswick was created, many other landscape gardens would follow, containing manifold references to classical

sources such as temples, statues and literary inscriptions. In the context of civic humanism, these references, to a

certain extent, also meant to instruct the mind of the owners and perhaps also the visitors. This value of ancient

learning was also manifested at Castle Howard. The garden included many references to classical antiquity such as

buildings and statues (figure 1). But this was no mere formal choice, since references to classical antiquity entailed a

message of virtue and politics. In the anonymous poem about Castle Howard, the owner is described as ‘for having

bravely serv’d their Country’s Cause … Surveyed the Hero’s who shou’d from him rise … Since from his Line the

Caesars shou’d descend’.23 The Elysian fields in Stowe, with their manifold references to history, were perhaps the

most notorious example of this new genre. In 1748 William Gilpin (1724–1804) proclaimed that he could not ‘help

imagining a Taste for these exalted pleasures contributes towards making me a better Man’24 in visiting this place. Like

Gilpin who could ‘read’ this garden as an example of civic virtue, other gardens as well testify to the discourse of civic

humanism.

A particular telling example of how the value of ancient learning, within the discourse of civic humanism, could still be

incorporated into the landscape garden is the choice of Hercules. This story represents a moral choice between virtue

and pleasure. In the depiction of this story, Hercules is asked to make this vital choice: virtue points towards the steep

difficult path, while vice recommends the meadows with the flowers, the easy path. Not unimportant, it was this

particular story that was also featured in the Characteristics of Shaftesbury and could be considered common education

in roughly the first half of the eighteenth century.

For Stourhead it has been suggested that the choice of Hercules was incorporated into the landscape garden as the

owner, Henry Hoare, also owned a painting by Poussin depicting the Choice of Hercules.25 Several years after buying

this painting, in 1753, the pantheon was under construction and placed within was the statue of Hercules between

Flora and Ceres, personifying virtue and vice. In another example, at Studley Royal, a temple of Hercules was erected

between 1740 and 1742. But the moral choice for the visitor of the garden was now not from within the temple itself,

but the temple in opposition to another object: the temple of Venus.26

In a similar manner, the Rotunda at Stowe housed a statue of the Venus de’ Medici in opposition to the temple of

Ancient Virtue, perhaps exemplifying the choice between virtue and vice. When William Shenstone (1714–1763) at the

Leasowes also included a copy of the Venus de’ Medici, he also included an inscription that would direct the meaning of

the statue. For Shenstone, the Venus half concealed and half naked, showed how to ‘Learn hence, to shun the vicious

waste/Of pomp, at large display’d’.27 Venus is thus included as an emblem of ‘good taste’, despite the fact that Venus

is generally considered as an example of ‘pleasure’, in opposition to public virtue. Therefore, as John Barrell has shown,

even Venus could still be considered as a rhetorical case of civic virtue, as in relation to other objects or by directing

the meaning with inscriptions.28 It is, however, important to note that the discourse of civic humanism was not

necessarily shared within every landscape garden, and that it depended on the intentions of those who owned these

gardens, to include specific statues or references.

The rise of modern aesthetics in England Although several landscape gardens in England during the 1750s and 1760s, such as the Leasowes and Stourhead, still

included references to civic virtues, other influences had at that point already gained the upper hand. In the same

poem about the Venus de’ Medici, Shenstone commented on ‘China’s vain alcoves’. By the middle of the eighteenth

century Chinese and Gothic evocations had become fashionable in the landscape garden and it is plausible that

Shenstone showed himself critical of these examples. Whether these Chinese or Gothic additions could be associative

or would be valued for more straightforward visual ends, either way they remained distinct from the classical

invocations that entailed the espousal of civic virtues. Edward Harwood has suggested that the use of all these

associative objects such as Chinese temples had collapsed ‘the distance between the self and the idea or experience

embodied in the object, thus making it more available for consumption’.29 In other words, they could espouse different

messages to their audience, but they could also be valued for more straightforward visual ends.

This profound change in attitude towards these classical evocations is also registered by how later writers would come

to consider these early examples of the landscape garden. In 1779 Lord Thomas Lyttelton remarked about Hagley that

it showed ‘an evident preference of strange gods, and, in my opinion, a very blasphemos improvement. Where nature

is grand, improve her grandeur, not by adding extraneous decorations, but by removing obstructions’.30 About Stowe

he makes a similar claim: ‘Stowe is, in my opinion a most detestable place’.31 The best known statement of this change

comes, however, from Thomas Whately (1726–1772), in his Observations on Modern Gardening where he opposed the

emblematic with the new fashion for expressive gardening.

All these devices are emblematical than expressive; they may be ingenious contrivances, and recall absent

ideas to the recollection; but they make no immediate impression, for they must be examined, compared,

perhaps explained, before the whole design of them is well understood; and though an allusion to a favourite or

well-known subject of history, of poetry, or of tradition, may now and then animate or dignify a scene, yet as

the subject does not naturally belong to a garden, the allusion should not be principle; it should seem to have

been suggested by the scene; a transitory image, which irresistibly occurred; not sought for, not laboured; and

have the force of a metaphor, free from the detail of an allegory.32

Despite the fact that Whately clearly recognized the difference with these older examples, his statement equally

distorts the history of garden making. A more balanced appraisal of the early landscape gardens would be to consider

them as both emblematic and expressive — as a shift towards modern aesthetics. While the impulse from sense

perception initiated the rise of the landscape garden, the design of these early landscape gardens remains, however,

subtly different from the examples in the second half of the eighteenth century. With the early landscape gardens, such

as Stowe, design remained somewhat subservient to the meaning that was inscribed in these places. So, the history of

gardening has less to do with an evolution to a so-called ‘ideal’ form of landscape design, but more with changes in the

cultural and the socioeconomic context predefining the ideal to which these gardens where made. This change in

context could also be explained by the rise of a burgeoning market economy around the middle of the eighteenth

century. A parallel evolution was also evident in the visual arts, as David Solkin explained in the case of paintings.

During our period, for the first time in English history, painting became an object of widespread capital investment;

and alongside other cultural producers who contributed to an increasingly active trade in luxury goods, artists soon

learned that many rules they had long accepted as absolute imperatives would have to give way to the higher laws of

supply and demand. Economic pressures undermined hierarchies of genres, and often even the boundaries between

different discourses.33

Thus with the rise of these dramatic economic changes the historical genre of painting lost its higher status as a result.

Universally regarded as the most prestigious of the genres, history-painting owed its unrivaled degree of discursive

importance to its putative status as the only truly civic form of two-dimensional imagery: as the only art that could

address its audience as a public body, by cultivating its viewers’ awareness of the interests which they shared with one

another, and which bound them to promote the good of all. Eschewing any interest in private persons or particularized

forms, the noblest branch of art was traditionally meant to portray heroic actions in its generalised language of

classical idealism. Works of this type instantiated the genuine citizen’s capacity to recognize and act upon the general

good, thus conforming his membership of the political (re)public, which was also a ‘republic of taste’. By the mid-

century a fundamentally different sort of ‘public’ had begun to assert its claim to that title: ‘a more inclusive public of

all private people, persons who — insofar as they were propertied and educated — as readers, listeners, and spectators

could avail themselves via the market of the [cultural] objects that were subject to discussion’.34

The evolution that occurred in the history of art also affected the history of garden making. The early landscape

gardens with all their references to classical antiquity can rightfully be considered as the equivalents of the historical

genre of painting — for instance both Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin — which gradually lost their higher status

around that time. Similarly in the case of gardens, from the 1750s onwards garden making now became the object of

more visual concerns by professionals such as Lancelot Brown, Richard Woods, Nathaniel Richmond and Williams Emes.

Yet, it also needs to be emphasized that these two periods partly overlap in the decades around 1750.

With the rise of a capitalist economy in England, it seems that ‘style’ became something that was imposed by a

designer, but in many cases, beyond the productive qualities of these enormous parklands, lacked any deeper

significance for the owners of these gardens. This is the reason why these later landscape gardens mostly did not

include any symbolic agenda. A typical landscape by Brown consisted of ‘clumps of trees’, ‘belts’, pathways and rivers

according to the ‘serpentine line of beauty’. Brown undoubtedly utilized the exiting topography to its fullest potential in

order to create these marvelous effects.

On the other hand, it could also be argued that the endless and repetitive application of this design formula is what

distinguishes these designs from the earlier landscape gardens. Examples such as Stowe, Stourhead, Castle Howard

and Leasowes are all unique in their own way and are less likely reduced to a predefined design formula. Another

difference with these early landscape gardens is that they were made in conjunction with existing formal layouts. Many

of the formal parts could be retained in these gardens and the new landscape gardens did not need to sweep away all

the existing features.

One writer, Stephen Bending, disagrees with the fact that the landscape gardens of the second half of the eighteenth

century are considered to be ‘expressive’. He suggests that this might be a misleading narrative. Bending claims that

‘despite the persuasiveness of claims for a transition in contemporary literature from the allegorical to the descriptive,

and from the public to the private, a transition which has also been asserted in the realms of painting, a parallel

transition is less apparent in the landscape garden’.35 His argument goes that while the emblematic has faded out of

the landscape garden, the sheer popularity of texts tended to encourage an attempt to read these sites in an

emblematic manner, as George Mason (1735–1806) in An Essay on Design in Gardening still considered the late

eighteenth century landscape garden to be a liberal art.

Yet written statements about the history of gardens cannot be taken as an isolated source of information, apart from

changes in the history of the gardens themselves, and should be explained within their cultural context. Concerning the

late eighteenth century, John Barrell clarifies the main reason why the arts where still framed within the discourse of

civic humanism, which was because this was the only criticism that was available for the higher genres of the visual

arts at that time.36 He even noted how writers from the first half of the eighteenth century such as Thomson or Spence

merely repeated or endorsed what Shaftesbury had written, and that the public function of the arts was at this point

already in retreat with the rise of a new commercial society.37

Similarly, the statements from writers such as Horace Walpole (1717–1797) and Mason that claim the landscape

garden to be a liberal art, need to be framed within their own political context as wanting to define this new genre of

garden as a superior and exclusive English invention. Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), the respected authority on the

arts, disagreed with them. According to Reynolds, gardening was not to be considered as a liberal art. Following his

description I would suspect he had the prototypical landscape design by Lancelot Brown in mind. ‘Gardening, as far as

Gardening is an Art, or entitled to that appellation, is a deviation from nature for if the true taste consists, as many

hold, in banishing every appearance of Art, or any traces of the footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a

Garden’.38

Continental Europe: the conception of beauty during the Ancien Régime

In the meanwhile, from the 1760s onwards, the landscape garden was making its debut in continental Europe, while

the garden making of Brown was reaching its climax in England. From that moment until the beginning of the

nineteenth century these continental landscape gardens, sometimes called the ‘jardin anglo-chinois’, included an

astonishing diversity of temples, obelisks, ruins, exotic buildings and ornamental farms, what in French they called

‘fabriques’. This was not only a matter of a few well-known landscape gardens such as Ermenonville, but was also

manifested in an uncountable number of smaller gardens, mostly unknown to a broader public.39 Clearly, this kind of

garden is strikingly different from the dominant trend with Lancelot Brown and his followers in England during the

second half of the eighteenth century. The landscape gardens on the continent, on the contrary, seem to correspond

more closely to the garden making in England from roughly before 1750 and partly also to the landscape designs by

William Chambers (1723–1796).

According to Adrian von Buttlar the preference for the so-called Anglo-Chinese garden in Germany with its diversity of

fabriques is a consequence of the translation into a different political context: the Ancien Régime.40 England, on the

contrary, had already experienced a Glorious Revolution as early as 1688 and would be hailed for its liberty by which

garden art was able to flourish. ‘Germany’, wrote von Buttlar, ‘which experienced no political revolution and the smaller

states which were still rooted in the Ancien Régime, could offer little room to these early manifestations of an

enlightened early-liberal worldview, which sprung after all from the “great republican aspiration of the spirit”’.41 This

general narrative does not, however, exclude the possibility that there might also be local differences in garden

making, as these gardens also expressed the relationships or rivalries between different noble families.42

In any case, following von Buttlar, I would suggest that this different political, social and economic context in

comparison with England resulted in a different conception of beauty, which was also manifested in garden making. For

France, Annie Becq has convincingly shown that the proper conditions for modern aesthetics only emerged in the

aftermath of the French Revolution. The period before then, from 1747 until 1794, she nonetheless considers to be a

decisive step towards modern aesthetics.43 This section will therefore look at the emergence of this new trend in

garden making in continental Europe as a dialectical shift: being influenced by a distinctive modern impulse, yet at the

same time also missing several essential traits of what ‘modern’ might mean. As an introduction it will not be possible

to cover the whole of Europe. The discussion is largely restricted to France, like England one of the leading authorities

in Europe on gardens and other cultural matters during the eighteenth century.

To begin with, it might be useful to recount how these differences in attitude towards garden art are manifested in the

exchanges between England and the continent. The Scottish garden maker Thomas Blaikie (1751–1838) proves to be a

useful example as he was involved with the creation of the early landscape gardens in France. He was, however,

critical of the wide-ranging diversity of fabriques and – according to him – the lack of knowledge about proper

landscape design. Monceau, Bagatelle, Mortefontaine, chateau de Val, Beauregard, Folie St James, Maupertuis and

Desert de Retz all fell out of favor. He wrote about Mortefontaine that this garden ‘a le même défaut que la plupart de

ceux que j’ai vus ailleurs, un grand nombre de sentiers étroits et sinueux sans rime ni raison’.44 In the case of the

Désert de Retz he considered the whole park to be ‘un labyrinthe de sentiers plutôt étroits et tortueux, sans former

beaucoup de sites agréables’.45

One of the few gardens which received the full appreciation of Blaikie was a garden designed by Jean-Marie Morel:

Guiscard. The French engineer and garden maker Jean-Marie Morel (1728–1810) as far we known also tended towards

a more naturalistic kind of landscape design. In the foreword of second edition of his ‘theory of gardens’ (1802) he

praised Lancelot Brown as ‘un des meilleurs artistes qu’ait produits l’Angleterre’.46 The reason for this, according to

Morel, related to the fact that Brown did not chose to be enslaved by the mania for fabriques. Indeed, with the

publishing of his second volume, Morel was now familiar with gardens such as Stowe, Stourhead and Kew, while he still

preferred the more naturalistic landscapes of Lancelot Brown.47

The English writer Arthur Young (1741–1820) also exposed a similar urge to condemn the newly created landscape

gardens in France. In visiting Mortefontaine he wrote that this garden included a great profusion of fabriques and also

a formal layout. He therefore wished that the French would not refer to these kind of gardens as in the English taste as

it was equally an extension of earlier traditions.48 For the Petit Trianon he considered this garden, much like many

others, to be more in the taste of the Chinese garden than the English garden; more in the manner of Chambers than

Brown.49 Earlier, in 1775, Lancelot Brown himself also made a very similar claim: ‘en France ils ne comprenent pas

exactement nos idées sur le jardinage et les dispositions qui, lorsqu’elles sont exactement comprises, apportent toute

l’élégance et tout le confort que l’Humanité demande a la Campagne’.50

Importantly, however, this kind of opinion was not necessarily shared by the cultural elite in continental Europe who

commissioned the creation of these gardens. The theater designer Louis Carrogis Carmontelle (1717–1806), made

such an explicit claim when he elaborated on the design for Monceau, a garden with a distinctive diversity of historical

and cultural evocations. He proclaimed that the conception of this garden was not led by ‘le désir d’imiter une nation

qui en faisant des jardins “naturels” passé le rouleau sur tous les gazons et gâte la nature en y montrant partout l’art

compassé du jardin sans imagination’.51

In 1784 the marquis Marc de Bombelles (1744–1822) visited several landscape gardens in England. He was inspired by

several of the earlier emblematic gardens such as Leasowes. More recent landscape gardens, like the immense park of

Blenheim, which had been designed by Lancelot Brown, were deemed to be less inspiring. ‘Trois heures de promenade

dans le jardin et le Parc de Blenheim n’ont pas à beaucoup prés suffi pour rassasier ma curiosité. La cascade, la riviere,

les divers sites ne sont point des joujoux comme dans nos soit disans jardins anglais, celui dont je parle est à ces

jardins comme une superbe edifice à la maison d’un petit bourgeois qui veut dans son étroit pavillon reunir les

merveilles de la grece et de Rome’.52

Despite the reputation of Lancelot Brown, it is unclear to what degree those involved in garden making in continental

Europe had an adequate understanding of Brown’s distinctive style. The duke Albert Casimir of Saxe-Teschen (1738–

1822) requested a design from Brown for his newly planned landscape garden at Fine Mountain near Brussels. In July

1782 Brown supplied him with a design, yet when the landscape garden was executed, a slightly different kind of

garden emerged. The garden included a long axis, fluently incorporated in the ensemble and absent in Brown’s plan.

Moreover, several emblematic features such as the Temple of Friendship were also incorporated.53 But even until

around 1800, it is still doubtful whether trends in England such as the picturesque vogue could be equated with what

was happening in continental Europe. The German writer Christian Stieglitz (1756–1836), for instance, rejected any

notion of the picturesque as advocated by Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price. Instead, Steiglitz pleaded for a

broader understanding of the picturesque, including the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin as a model,

and not solely the naturalistic landscapes of Salvator Rosa.54

The reason why many in continental Europe demanded a garden that more closely resembled the early landscape

gardens in England, is also manifested in the writings of the prince Charles-Joseph de Ligne (1735–1814). In visiting

Guiscard in France — one of the rare late eighteenth century gardens in France not to include a broad repertoire of

fabriques — he gave his appreciation of its design. ‘Comme je ne rencontre aucun detail, aucune scène intéressante, et

aucune objet mystérieux, je crois que toute la beauté de Guiscard reside dans la grande masse d’eau du superbe lac,

et la grande masse de verdure de la superbe pelouse’.55 In all his writings de Ligne was attentive to, or even

celebrated, the visual variety and intricacy of the topography and the layout of these gardens throughout Europe. Yet

elsewhere he also explained that he essentially searched in landscape gardens for that which pleased the eyes and the

soul; thus gardens that also engage the imagination with different layers of meaning. René-Louis de Girardin (1735–

1808) spoke about the effects of gardening on the senses and the soul, and speaks in terms of ‘l’accroissement

moral’.56 Claude-Henri Watelet (1718–1786), in his writings, considered the landscape garden to be a liberal art,

instead of the so-called mechanical art, precisely because these gardens were not merely about creating pleasure to

the sense, but to touch the mind and the soul as well.57

In these remarks by de Ligne, de Girardin and Watelet, I would suggest, resides the essence of the ‘aesthetics’ in the

late eighteenth-century continental landscape garden. This might be explained as what Robert Norton considers to be a

distinctive eighteenth-century conception of beauty: the beautiful soul. The notion of the beautiful soul rests on the

assumption that there exists a profound affinity between beauty and goodness and that they form an indivisible unity

(even though the interrelationship between beauty and ethics is surely not limited to the eighteenth century

alone).58 For the emergence of this cultural icon, the beautiful soul, Norton traces the influence of writers such as John

Locke on a new conception of perception in relation to ethics. In particular he highlights Locke’s concern in promoting

rational convictions with the paradoxical assumption that these would ultimately be of benefit to ethical concerns.

‘Whether Locke had intended it or not, by dispensing with such innate ideas, he appeared to make the already

unsteady ground of moral judgment more uncertain still’.59

In the 1750s moral beauty was, according to Norton, transformed into the concept of the beautiful soul. With the

beautiful soul it was assumed that the physical traits of something as beautiful would somehow induce a moralizing

effect on the viewer. Yet what constituted morality in beauty came to be a notion up for grabs and open to different

interpretations. Julie, or the New Heloise, written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and first published in 1761, is also

invoked as an example of the beautiful soul by Norton. In this novel Julie’s garden both reflects and enhances the inner

state of the mind.60 So, the eighteenth-century landscape garden, in France, which entailed a distinctive broad range of

experiences, can undoubtedly also be seen as an expression of the ‘beautiful soul’.

For other arts, Jean Starobinski observes that the drastic change in thinking about aesthetics during the second half of

the eighteenth century was not immediately felt in the artworks themselves.61 This is, however, not necessarily the

case for gardens, since the introduction of the landscape garden in continental Europe is one of the most striking

expressions of a shift towards modern aesthetics. According to the German philosopher Chirstian Hirschfeld (1742–

1792) the publication in 1761 of La Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a decisive step towards a modern

taste in garden making.62 Indeed, it was following this period that the landscape garden suddenly became popular all

over Western Europe. With the end of the Seven Year’s War in 1763 access to the English landscape gardens by the

French nobility became much easier. Yet this cannot be the only reason why the landscape garden all of a sudden

became popular in continental Europe, for much earlier these gardens had been visited, without the fashion spreading

to other countries.

That these early continental landscape gardens are an expression of a distinctive modern impulse, is registered in

several ways. According to Joseph Disponzio one of the earliest examples in France, the Moulin-Joli by Claude-Henri

Watelet, was most likely influenced by Locke’s theory of sense perception. Or, more precisely, it would have been one

of John Locke’s pupils in France, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), whose Traité des sensations inspired

Watelet to take sense perception as a starting point for landscape design.63 Either way, whether Watelet was

influenced by Bonnot de Condillac or not, his treatise on gardening making took on a new conception of beauty that

was indebted to Lockean psychology. No longer is beauty considered to be a homogenous concept, but the different

effects of objects on the mind are acknowledged. Whatelet now distinguished between three principal characters in

garden making: the picturesque, the poetic and the romantic64 — as Addison had earlier made the distinction between

beauty and greatness for the first time. Later on, Watelet divided these three categories into a wide range of

subcategories such as the noble, the agreeable, the poetic and the romantic.65

When Watelet discovered Moulin-Joli it was in fact an old formal garden, overgrown and including several ruins. The old

avenues of trees afforded Watelet with a succession of views outwards along the Seine and the surrounding

countryside. Instead of completely redesigning this site into a prototypical landscape garden with winding pathways,

Whatelet only made small adjustments to the existing situation with the help of the painter François Bucher (1703–

1770). Thus, while this garden might vaguely be considered ‘formal’ merely viewing it from a plan, in reality this place

was in a distinctive new fashion that entailed a broad range of sensations. Similarly, in Ermenonville avenues of trees

through a large wood formed an integral part of the landscape composition. At several points, the different sensations

within this estate such as the melancholic are registered by visitors to this place.66

This modern urge for different kinds of sensation was thus manifested in a variety of ways within these gardens.

Overall, the attention to landscape experiences resulted in a wide range of gardens that explored, in different ways,

this new paradigm. The sheer inventiveness of these gardens is eloquently described by John Dixon Hunt for some

well-known French examples.

The Duc de Chartres’ Monceau was a wildly exotic anthology of what its designer, Carmontelle, called ‘all times

and places’; at Ermenonville, Girardin exercised both his determinedly painterly design schemes throughout the

parkland and an explicit political agenda, yet the estate came the closest among the French designs to the look

and feel of English landscaping; at Méréville a deliberately wide-ranging series of scenarios was devised with

the active involvement of a painter; while at the Désert the Retz over a dozen fabriques scattered through

woodland and valley meadow were at once a strange dream and a reasoned exposition of Enlightenment

values.67

While such a notable form of creativity also marks later periods of garden making, these late eighteenth-century

landscape gardens in France, equally, need to be seen as a phase in between the emergence of modern aesthetics.

Contrary to the situation in England, the landscape garden still stood in a manifold dialogue with other forms of arts, as

in the doctrine of ut pictura poesis. Painters and architects, most importantly, but also poets and philosophers in some

instances had their role in the creation of these gardens.68 Consequently, it was common to find in these gardens a

richer context of experience: a continuity in garden art with other times and other places, as exemplified by the many

fabriques and literary inscription to be found within them. In short, the design of the gardens was not a purely formal

concern as we know it from 1800 onwards, but design was still considered to be a matter of philosophy and addressing

the human mind.

In Cérruti’s poem Les jardins de Betz, this landscape garden was praised as it unites ‘par ses enchantements/L’antique

poésie à nos fables modernes’. ‘Des temples, des tombeaux, des rochers, des caverns’ are considered to be ‘la leçon de

l’histoire’ that haunt this place.69 And the Abbé Delille (1738–1813) in his didactical poem Les jardins urged his readers

to view every part of Italy with its classical past as ‘le cours des âges’.70 Concerning ‘la ruine immortelle’ of Rome,

Delille poetically declared how ‘leur masse indestructible a fatigué le temps’.71 In Mortefontaine an enormous rock was

aptly inscribed with this line of text (figure 2). So references to past ages still held sway long into the eighteenth

century, as exemplified by the many references to classical antiquity and other epochs in the landscape garden. In

Ermenonville the marquis René-Louis de Girardin erected a circular temple based on the temple of Tivoli, yet dedicated

to modern philosophy. Each of the six columns celebrated men of great accomplishments ranging back to the

seventeenth century such as Descartes and Newton and prolonged to the contemporaries of de Girardin such as

Voltaire and Rousseau. Based on the idea that our own knowledge is limited and is to be augmented in future

generations, the temple was left unfinished.

Inevitably, the supposed layers of meaning to be found in these gardens are in many instances open to different

interpretations, since the intentions by which they were designed have only been recorded for a minority of them. In

the Désert de Retz the visitors were left to wonder, perhaps deliberately, about the meaning of the enigmatic column,

which was partly in ruins (figure 3). As references to Chinese and other oriental cultures are commonly found in these

kinds of gardens — the so-called jardin anglo-chinois — a Chinese house was also found in the Désert de Retz. Was the

choice to include these types of references in the landscape garden steered by a search for purely visual stimuli or was

it informed by ideological or philosophical concerns? For many aristocratic landlords, but certainly not everyone, China

was indeed seized on as an example of an enlightened attitude, against the prevailing religious intolerance during the

last decades of Ancien Régime.72 Jia Ning suggested that this ideology might very well have triggered the choice of

Chinese evocations to be found in these kind of gardens, such as the Désert de Retz.73 Apart from this essay by Ning,

there are scarcely any writings that consider these Chinese evocations within this broader sociocultural context, so it is

at the moment implausible to make any general statements about this.

The way in which garden art was informed by different layers of meaning lingered on in the decades following the

French Revolution. For instance, from 1806 until 1827, the sculptor François-Frédéric Lemot (1772–1827) created the

landscape garden Garenne-Lemot in the region of the Loire-Atlantique, France. The garden included a diversity of

fabriques with references to literature, antiquity, French culture and local histories. Shortly before, this place and the

surrounding region had been involved in the War of the Vendée (1793–1796), a counter-revolution against the French

revolutionaries. Moreover the garden included an ‘Ancient Tomb’ with the inscription ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ (I, too, lived in

Arcadia), as famously known from two paintings by Nicolas Poussin. In general we would now interpret this inscription

as to inform visitors by the knowledge of mortality. Yet it is unclear how this was precisely perceived at Garenne-

Lemot. Over time, these kinds of stories were in subtle ways reinterpreted according to a changing cultural context. In

the decades following 1800 in France, this painting and aphorism now became associated for many with contemporary

discussions about burial practices.74 Garden art was entering a new chapter in cultural history.

The eclipse of the Enlightenment The French Revolution and the constitution of a new social and institutional order from 1795 until 1814 proved to be a

decisive turn in cultural history. This period has been identified by Annie Becq as a decisive shift for the emergence of

modern aesthetics in France.

With the ending of the Reign of Terror on Thermidor [Revolution of Thermidor, 27 July 1794] a period of about

twenty years opens, where, in the accomplishment or the suffocation of potentials that appeared in the

previous century, the right conditions were realized for the emergence of modern aesthetics. One should also

follow this investigation until the end of the [Napoleonic] Empire, in order to see realized, in the wake of the

revolutionary assemblies, but also against their boldest attempts, the institutional frameworks of the intellectual

and the artistic life that would become the Age of Romanticism, and to see the aesthetic principles of the

creative subject formulated, being that of aesthetics sensu stricto.75

So far only one scholar, John Dixon Hunt, has targeted the far-reaching consequences of this change around the turn

of 1800 for the history of garden making. ‘That moment constituted the watershed in landscape architecture for a

variety of non-artistic reasons. Since then there has really been no comparably fundamental change in social, political,

aesthetic, and psychological attitudes: we still exist in a world that was determined by what happened around

1800’.76 In his essay Hunt traces the long-term consequences of this change for the profession of landscape

architecture — a topic we will briefly return to in the conclusion of this article. For the period around 1800 he does not

invoke any primary sources as ‘there were many causes of this, many effects, none of which seems to have

registered’.77 Hunt mainly refers to the situation in England. Yet if such a decisive change took place around 1800, it

might be useful to look at France where this change in mentalities was perhaps most abruptly felt with the French

Revolution.

So, precisely what happened around 1800 in the history of garden making? Several different, yet closely interrelated,

points are important to note: (1) the emergence of a specialized profession by the name of landscape architecture; (2)

a change of the public for whom these gardens are made; (3) the rise of a modern conception of space; (4) a semantic

shift in garden aesthetics; and (5) the end of garden making as one of the fine arts. First, it was around 1800 that the

far-reaching dialogue of gardening with the sister arts in continental Europe was largely diminished. Instead, garden

making emerged as a specialized profession at that point in France, primarily schooled in horticulture78 and judged

according to its own inner logic. In France Louis-Sulpice Varé (1803–1883), François Duvillers (1807–1881), Denis

(1811–1890) and Eugène Bühler (1822–1907), Brice (1822–1889) and Henri Michel (1854–1930), Jean-Pierre Barillet

Deschamps (1824–1873) and Edouard André (1840–1911) are all examples of this new generation of specialized

professionals.

The invention of the term ‘architecte paysagiste’ (landscape architect) in 1804, in reference to Jean-Marie Morel,

coincides with this transformation into a specialized profession.79 The publication of Curtin’s Essai sur les jardins (1807)

marked the first time that ‘architecte paysagiste’ appeared in a theoretical treatise on garden making. One year later

Gabriel Thouin (1747–1829) was referred to as ‘architecte de jardins’ (garden architect), a term that is nowadays still

commonly used in several European countries. In 1825 Pichot Amédée (1795–1877) wrote about William Kent and

Lancelot Brown for the first time as ‘architectes paysagistes’. Over the course of the nineteenth century the term

landscape architecture was slowly adopted as the standard reference for this new profession.

But the fact that ‘landscape’ could now become an umbrella term for the profession signifies a profound change in

cultural values. During the eighteenth century the term landscape (‘paysage’ or ‘landskip’) received a specific

significance in the context of painterly art. The encyclopedia of Diderot defined ‘paysage’ as ‘le genre de peinture

qui représente [emphasis added] les campagnes’.80 Similarly, the eighteenth century gardens — that we now loosely

describe as landscape gardens — were only described as such on very specific occasions. As ‘landscape’ was considered

to be a representational art it was in fact rarely used to designate an area of land on its own. Addison, as we have

seen, famously advocated turning the existing countryside into a ‘landskip’ by way of analogy. Importantly, however,

for Addison to turn an area into a ‘landskip’ this also needed ‘additions of Art’. So not all areas could be described by

the metaphor of a landscape, but just those areas that appealed to representational art — for instance by including

temples and statues — as also found in the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. A similar case is William

Shenstone who created Leasowes and also for the first time utilized the term ‘landskip gardening’. The garden at

Leasowes, being richly embedded with meaning was also considered as a representation and therefore could rightfully

be described as a ‘landskip’.

For the majority of the writers in the eighteenth century the term ‘landscape garden’ seems to have been less obvious

as a general designation because, strictly speaking, gardens are not representations of areas, but are basically also

areas themselves. René-Louis de Girardin in his De la composition des paysages confirms that eighteenth-century

garden makers have been well acquainted with the term ‘paysage’ — and even endowed it with a central importance —

but used it in a more specific manner. The reason for de Girardin to invoke the term ‘paysage’ is explained in his

treatise as he conceived this genre of garden making in a far-reaching dialogue with painterly art. Yet he considered

‘landscape’ to be explicitly different from ‘land’ as he wrote about ‘de fixer enfin les idées entre un Jardin, un Pays, &

un Paysage’.81 Only at the end of his treatise did de Girardin, somewhat reluctantly, invoke the term ‘jardin paysages’

(garden landscapes) as the genre which reunites different places.82 In this way the garden could also function as a

representational art and could, thus, be described as a landscape.

From around 1800 the theory that art was considered to be an imitation or a representation of ‘nature’ was abruptly

replaced by a modern view of the arts. In short: any area could now be described as a ‘landscape’ on the basis of, say,

just being visually attractive. Consequently, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the term ‘jardin paysager’

(landscape garden) could suddenly be adopted for any sort of informal garden design. In Pierre Boitard’s (1789–

1859) Manuel complet de l’architecte des jardins; ou l’art de les composer et de les décorer of 1834, he used the

French term ‘jardin paysager’ in this more generalized manner. Around the same time, in 1839, Louis-Eustache Audot

(1783–1870) also abundantly invoked the term ‘jardin paysager’ for any informal landscape design, and also further

made the distinction between the ‘jardin paysager chinois’, the ‘jardin paysager anglais’ and the ‘jardin paysager

française’.83

In the English literature the term ‘landscape gardening’ had already been adopted by George Mason in 1795. While he

wrote that ‘the principal end of landscape gardening is to please the eye’84 he also betrayed a modern conception of

aesthetics as being merely visually pleasing. In 1804 John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843) published his Observations on

the Formation and Management of Useful and Ornamental Plantations. In this he used the term ‘landscape gardening’

in a similar vague manner for any sort of informal garden design.

For others the usage of ‘landscape’ varied in subtle ways according to their own preferences or definitions. In 1820

Gabriel Thouin distinguished ‘les Jardins chinois, anglais ou de genre irrégulier’ from ‘les Jardins des paysages,

paysagistes, paysagers, ou de la Nature’. The first category was for him fanciful gardens, such as Monceau and

Chavilles, those who incorporated a dazzling number of fabriques. As examples of the ‘Jardins des paysages’ he listed

Ermenonville, Guiscard, Méréville, Petit Trianon, Jambeville and Moulin Joli. In 1835 Nicolas Vergnaud used the term

often in the context of painterly art, but also referred to the surroundings of a garden as ‘le paysage environnant’ (the

surrounding landscape).

For some ‘landscape’ was at this point still exclusively associated with painterly art. In 1810 Uvedale Price (1747–

1829) published his Essays on the Picturesque. In this he referred to landscape gardening strictly for gardens that

constituted a dialogue with painterly art. Yet this dialogue between the garden and the arts that he envisioned is on a

formal basis and is strikingly different from earlier examples such as Stourhead, which were informed by meaning. The

geographer Alexander Von Humboldt (1769–1859), similarly, considered landscape paintings to be an important

inspiration, in his case as a means to comprehend the character of different regions. He never did, however, utilize the

term ‘landschaft’ (landscape) to designate an area of land in itself.85 Yet with the rise of modern aesthetics and relative

values anyone could now make his own definition of what ‘landscape’ ought to be. Eventually the geographer K.

Rosenkrantz could now define landscape in 1850 as ‘relative wholes, stepwise integrated local systems of factors

comprising all realms of nature’.86

The second point we make about this period concerns a change of the public for whom these gardens were made. In

France during the eighteenth century the owners of these gardens, a cultural élite such as René-Louis de Girardin and

Claude-Henri Watelet, played a prominent role in the conception of these gardens, as they also wrote some of the most

important essays and treatises on the subject. From 1800 onwards, with the rise of a commercial and later an

industrial mode of social life, garden making now suddenly became available to an increasingly wider public.

Several treatises were written at the beginning of the nineteenth century that anticipated this popularization of garden

making. Jacques Lalos confirmed that his ‘objet principal a été de render la science des jardins plus familière, et si

j’osais le dire, plus répandue, plus … populaire, en la mettant à la portée de tout le monde. J’ai desire faire connaître

mieux les moyens à employer; mettre les proprietaries, et particulièrement ceux qui habitant la campagne, plus à

même de se créer de beaux paysages, par des moyens économiques’.87 The choice for a landscape garden now

became the ‘style’ that a designer could impose on any number of sizes, without any specific cultural resonances to the

public for whom it was made. In a similar fashion Hunt also explained this shifting position of the garden in cultural

history.

It was at the moment of the social expansion of landscape architecture, freed of its public art functions and now

appealing to and encouraging the taste of whomever chose to invoke it, that style became available as if in

some mail-order catalogue. Style for the generation of early landscape gardenists — those who designed Castle

Howard, Stowe and Stourhead among others — had been a matter of ideology; the medium was the message.

When William Kent featured Gothick and/or classical buildings, he was able to assume that at the very least for

a small circle of cognoscenti their codes were readable; forty years on, Humphry Repton not only did not

encode his architectural styles, but he offered his clients straightforward visual options. By then style could be

simply a formal choice.88

Third, not only the profession of garden making and its public, but also the conception of the (landscape) garden itself

was transformed from the beginning of the nineteenth century onwards. For eighteenth-century owners the landscape

garden was considered to be unique precisely because its beauty, in the words of René-Louis de Girardin, could not be

reduced to the flatness of a sheet of paper.89 A ground plan or a view was only a means of conceiving a landscape

garden, but never an end in itself. According to the duke François-Henri d’Harcourt (1726–1802) the first mistake was

to start from a plan in conceiving a landscape garden.90 Many such as de Girardin and d’Harcourt resolutely eschewed

any predefined stylistic principles to describe the landscape garden, if it was to be considered as an art. In 1817

Jacques Lalos still hailed de Girardin, next to Morel, for what he has written about garden making, while he himself also

boldly rejected any predefined rules for the conception of the irregular genre in garden making.91

The publication of Gabriel Thouin’s Plans raisonnés de toutes les espèces de jardins in 1820, however, also registered

an evolution towards a modern conception of space. At the outset of this widely consulted and reprinted document

Thouin praised the many treatises and essays that had already been written, but asserted that ‘il en est peu, ou même

point, à notre connaissance, dans lequels la pratique de cet art soit développée par des plans exacts, dont toutes les

parties figurées soient dans leurs justes proportions’.92 For this, Thouin featured more than 50 plans of gardens for all

kinds of situations. What is striking about all of them is that they broadcast the landscape garden with stylistically

curving lines, to be designed and judged a priori from a plan (figure 4). A similar claim comes from Nicolas Vergnaud.

In 1831, when visiting ‘la Bibliothéque royale de Londres’, he found that all the writings on the landscape garden were

insufficient as they did not include any detailed plans.93 Consequently, in his treatise of 1835 he included several

detailed plans, ‘indispensable’ to understand ‘les divers préceptes de la composition des jardins’.

Later on, several nineteenth-century writers would hail the publication of Thouin as being a decisive turning point for

the development of the profession. In 1833 John Claudius Loudon considered the park of Saint-Ouen by Thouin to be

one of the best examples in the genre because the pathways had the right sinuosity and were developed according to

‘strict scientific principles’.94‘Dans ses dessins’, Louis-Eustache Audot wrote in 1839, ‘il a suivi les règles de la

composition, telles qu’un goût épuré les adoptait, et telles, sans doute, qu’elles doivent être toujours suivies en

France’.95 In 1846 Denis Alphonse wrote that ‘on devra contourner gracieusement toutes les lignes, en les

subordonnant, toutefois, aux règles de la perspective. … Mais la ligne courbe n’acquiert d’élégance que dessinée sur

une grande échelle, encore doit-elle être douce dans ses contours’ and praised the ‘rules’ as established by Thouin.96 In

the second half of the nineteenth century an appraisal of Thouin was echoed by writers such as Edouard André, who

considered Thouin to be the first who conceived the landscape garden according to ‘des règles fixes’.97

But whether you believe this stylistic approach to have originated with Thouin or not, it is a fact that this trend is

registered with the majority of the nineteenth-century landscape architects. Writers such as Denis Alphonse (1794–

1876) now conceived the landscape or informal garden as diametrically opposed to the formal garden: ‘si, l’on veut

tracer un jardin paysager, il faudra éviter toutes les formes qui se rapprochent des caractères

géométriques’.98 Similarly, with the emergence of this modern conception of space, it also became general to think

about gardens in terms of ‘styles’ and ‘design’, terms that had never received central importance or meaning as from

the period of 1800 onwards. This way of thinking was already exemplified by Pierre Boitard as he talked about the

‘style paysager’, the ‘style pittoresque’, the ‘style français’, the ‘style gothique’, the ‘style chinois’ and so on.99

Ironically, Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand (1817–1891) wrote in 1867 that introducing more exactitude in ‘les procédés

empiriques’ of design would be the only way to raise the status of gardening as an art.100 But the augmentation of the

garden as an art was now in designing with predefined stylistic principles on a ground plan: pathways as almost

mathematical circles, ellipses and arches. This discourse was a general tendency during the Second French Empire

(1852–1870) in France and beyond. It was picked up by an uncountable number of landscape architects. Luisa Limido

in her exceptional study of Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps and the gardens of the Second French Empire (1852–1870)

coined this period as a distinctive expression of modernity in the history of garden making.101

The industrialization was conceived as the highest expression of modernity. Its application in the context of

landscape design was considered as an important and prestigious achievement that constituted the pride of

these new professionals. … The creative aspect, that was always considered as the fundament fundament of

landscape gardening, was from this point limited to the application of pre-defined aesthetic rules.102

Fourth, it was from around 1800 that the astonishing diversity of fabriques such as classical temples and literary

invocations found in the eighteenth–century landscape garden in France largely disappeared from the canvas. Garden

making was now conceived according to its own ‘inner logic’ and the materials that are deemed to be inherent to its

medium, similarly to what happened earlier in England. The comte Alexandre de Laborde (1773–1842) wrote in his

treatise of 1808 that there were principally two epochs or periods: those of the first epoch, he wrote, ‘sont chargés

d’ornemens inutiles et incohérens; et ce n’est que dans ceux qui les ont suivis que le bon sens et l’utile se trouvent

réunis à l’élégance’.103 Thus, the early landscape garden with its profusion of fabriques was deemed to be an initial

phase of the landscape garden to be ‘perfected’ at a later time.

The overview of garden history in Londres et les Anglais (1804) by Jean-Louis Ferri de St Constant (1755–1830), also

testifies to a similar theological view on history, as anything that comes later and is more ‘natural’ is automatically

considered to be superior compared to what came before. ‘L’art [du jardin] ne fit aucun progrès jusqu’au moment où

Brown osa s’écarter de la route tracée et se faire de nouvelles règles’.104 At the beginning of the nineteenth century

Brown had equally already fallen into disrepute, most notably due to the picturesque vogue with Uvedale Price and

Richard Payne Knight as its principal proponents. In his conclusion, Ferri de St Constant now brought Humphry Repton

into view ‘qu’on met à la tête de eux qui professent aujourd’hui l’art des jardins, pourrait corriger les erreurs des ses

prédécesseurs, si à son goût et à sa facilité pour le dessin’.105 Although this text solely refers to the evolution of garden

making in England, it is nonetheless striking as previously, in the late eighteenth century, the earlier landscape

gardens such as Stowe and the Leasowes enjoyed a significant presence in the landscape garden of continental Europe.

Now they were being dismissed as unimportant.

The gradually declining fashion for fabriques, including the variety of historical evocations, could also be explained by

the new way in which the present was relating to the past. In Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical

Time Reinhard Koselleck situates the rupture of modernity around 1789–1815 because of this new conception of time.

According to Koselleck, from that moment onwards one’s own life was no longer seen in continuity with others from

history. Similarly, in 1799 the German historian Karl Ludwig Woltmann (1770–1817) wrote that ‘the French Revolution

was for the whole world a phenomenon that appeared to mock all historical wisdom, daily developing out of itself new

phenomena which one knew less and less how to come to terms with’.106François-René Chateaubriand (1768–1848)

also noted that since the French Revolution ‘un traînard dans ce monde a non-seulement vu mourir les hommes, mais

il a vu mourir les idées; principes, mœurs, goût, plaisirs, peines, sentiments, rien ne ressemble à ce qu’il a connu: il

est d’une race différente de l’espèce humaine au milieu de laquelle il achève ses jours’.107

As a final point, it is worth noting that gardening around 1800 suddenly lost its status as an art for most writers. In

1794 the German philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) claimed that gardening lacked any ‘fixed’ principles to

consider this as a form of art.108 Underlying his thinking was a modern conception of reason; the ‘Formtrieb’ and

emotion; the ‘Sinnestrieb’, as opposing categories. When it came to gardening he condemned the ‘excesses’ in the

formality of the French garden and the ‘lawlessness’ of the English landscape garden. A middle way was needed,

according to Schiller, between the formal drive of the French formal garden and the sensual drive of the English

landscape garden, to raise it to an art form. That the history of garden making could be considered in this strikingly

empty fashion is an example of this new way of thinking.

In France the landscape garden was also denied the status as being an art by Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de

Quincy (1755–1849) in 1823. Similar to Joshua Reynolds who had already stated that he considered the landscape

garden to be unworthy as an art since it constituted merely the imitation of natural appearances and in removing every

trace of art in it. ‘Quel plaisir (j’entends plaisir d’imitation) peut-il donc y avoir pour l’âme que rien n’avertit qu’il y a de

l’imitation. … ce qui fait que ce prétendu art du jardinage est le moins art qu’il est possible’.109 In a similar fashion the

Italian writer Hippolyte Pindemonte (1753–1828) judged in 1817 that the landscape garden cannot belong to be the

arts. ‘Lorsqu’un beau paysage dessiné par la main de l’homme s’offre à nos regards, nous éprouvons sans doute une

douce sensation; mais la réflextion loin de l’accroître, la diminue’.110

The legacy of the eighteenth century: a conclusion While many changes in garden aesthetics occurred over the course the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is hard to

deny that several fundamental notions about what came to be known as ‘aesthetics’ are rooted in the eighteenth

century. The purpose of this contribution was to provide the reader with a much-needed overview of this initial period

and how this was manifested in the writings and practice of garden making. As an introduction it was only possible to

outline the situation in England and France. More research on specific aspects or for other countries could further

unfold, complement or even nuance the storyline as sketched previously. As a conclusion it will be useful to take a

bird-eye’s view of the topic addressed in this article, as well as the enduring legacy and importance of the eighteenth

century for the theory and the development of landscape architecture.

In the case of aesthetics and ethics there is a lot that can be learned from the ‘Age of the Enlightenment’. From the

start it seems that a shift away from classical ideas about beauty or strict imitation initially created one of the more

inventive periods in the history of landscape architecture. Perhaps in no other discipline could the argument from John

Locke about sense perception be combined in such a way as to resonate with both the ancients and the moderns.

When Joseph Addison advocated the use of visual properties of the countryside — a pretty ‘landskip’ — as a starting

point for garden design, the argument about the positive practical consequences of this view were undeniable. No

longer was it necessary to transform a given site into unproductive land, but the ‘agreeable’ and the ‘profitable’ could

be combined into one harmonious whole. At the same time references to allegorical art such as sculpture, poetry and

painterly art could still define the identity of the garden, thus securing the garden as one of the liberal arts.

That the eighteenth century landscape garden was considered to be an important artistic manifestation of its time is a

consequence of this collaboration between different worldviews. The status of the garden as a worthy form of art was

at this point in history not only proclaimed by a few professionals, but supported by a wider cultural elite of owners,

philosophers, poets, architects and artists. For many of them, it was the engagement of the garden with the practical

realms, the unique dialogue with its medium, as well as its philosophical and moral content that qualified the landscape

garden to be a unique form of art, if not a superior form of art. In 1745 Jean-Bernard Le Blanc declared, when visiting

England, that ‘il y a dans la nature une majesté à laquelle l’art ne saurait atteindre’.111 Later, de Girardin in the

introduction to his treatise on the landscape garden mused about what he thought could become one of the most

interesting arts. ‘C’est art peut néanmoins devenir un des plus intéressants; il est à la Poésie et à la Peinture ce que la

réalité est à la description, et l’original à la copie’.112

Given the importance of the eighteenth century for cultural history generally, it is surprising that a discussion of

gardens is in many instances restricted to a British historiography. Particularly for the second half of the eighteenth

century, a history which limits itself to only a few English designers — Lancelot Brown, William Chambers and Humphry

Repton — dismisses important lessons that can be learned from this new genre as it was translated into continental

Europe. Likewise, Michael Fried also pointed towards a similar tendency in the historiography of art relating to the

second half of the eighteenth century, which focuses on an international scope of developments while differences

between nations are minimized or even ignored.113 Instead, if we consider the influence of different socioeconomic and

political contexts on the conception of beauty, the history of garden making could make a more significant contribution

to art and cultural history in general than it has made until now. This also applies to the period following the French

Revolution covered in this article, although the writings and the practice of this period in France rarely receive any

scholarly attention.

Now, the far-reaching cultural changes as engineered by the French Revolution are the subject of some of the most

controversial and fiercely debated topics. According to Eric Hobsbawm many words that we commonly use today were

only invented or gained their modern significance during the French Revolution or the period afterwards. ‘To image the

modern worlds without these words (i.e. without the things and concepts for which they provide names) is to measure

the profundity of the revolution which broke out between 1789 and 1848. … This revolution has transformed and

continues to transform the entire world’.114 ‘Landscape architecture’ is thus no isolated case in being invented as a

distinctive modern term at the beginning of the nineteenth century. We might in this case even speak about the ‘past

of the present’:115 how our own way of looking at the world is predefined by changes that occurred during the course of

history.

John Dixon Hunt, while not explicitly referring to the French Revolution, pointed towards the period around 1800 as

constituting one of the most profound changes in the history of garden making.116 Tom Turner, while also being

appreciative, considered Hunt’s essay nonetheless to be ‘over-sophisticated and unbalanced in its emphasis on the role

of landscape design as a fine art. Pure works of art’, Turner insisted, ‘do not have functions’.117 To clarify his point of

view, Turner sets out to answer the Socratic question as to what are the ends and what the means in landscape

design. According to him ‘the aim of landscape design is to make good places’118 and its means vary such as the

survey-analysis-design procedure. Yet if we consider landscape architecture to be a philosophical question then

shouldn’t its fundamental aim at least be to contribute to human wellbeing, instead of just making good places?

Moreover, the fact that ‘aesthetics’ in landscape architecture is nowadays still predefined as an autonomous category,

as in the previous statement by Turner, suggests that our own conception of beauty is still indebted to the change that

occurred around 1800. Ian Thompson voices a general opinion among landscape architects, when he states that ‘to

restrict design to aesthetic concerns is to misrepresent the complexity of the activity. Aesthetic values have to be

measured against [emphasis added] functional needs and societal and ecological concerns’.119 What strikes me even

more is that aesthetics in landscape architecture can now even be used as an argument to discredit ethical concerns

such as ecology.120 Recently, in 2012, the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) organized a

conference on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. The organizers of this conference rightly observed that

ethics and aesthetics are generally considered as distinctive realms in landscape architecture and that such an

opposition obstructs the critical development of the profession.121

Others, such as Elizabeth Meyer, have now pleaded for a shift in our thinking about aesthetics. Based on the writings of

Catherine Howett and Anne Whiston Spirn she reframes beauty not simply as an act of pleasure but possibly as one of

transformation.122She argues that the combination of physical characteristics and sensory qualities could possibly alter

one’s mental and physical state. Needless to say, this is also a legacy of the eighteenth century, as the attention to the

physical properties of the surroundings and their effect on the mind was at the centre of garden aesthetics. Elsewhere,

Meyer also notes that our own modernist thinking about culture (including aesthetics) as opposed to nature during the

nineteenth and twentieth century has resulted in landscape architecture only playing a secondary role as compared to

‘culture’ and ‘architecture’.123 Perhaps landscape architecture could benefit from more critical research — both on the

positive and the negative consequences — of modern aesthetics as it surfaced in history.

Garden making, being a practical activity, is something to be embraced and it could avoid some of the pitfalls of the

institutionalized art world, whereby almost anything goes. Or to use the famous aphorism of Arthur Danto: ‘the objects

approach zero as their theory approaches infinity.124 David Marshall has made a similar observation of this tendency as

landscape architecture can somehow bypass this constraint.

The justification for Land Art, then, is the modernist preoccupation with the question ‘what is art?’. However,

considered as an instance of the genre of placemaking, and without the protective camouflage of ‘Art’, a work

like Double Negative can be seen for what it is, an environmentally destructive act, a macho demonstration of

the damage that boys can wreak on the environment with a bulldozer or two, and one that does not even have

economic or military necessity to justify it.125

While landscape architecture does manage to escape the pitfall of completely dissolving into philosophy, it does tends

to go to the other extreme; as aesthetics in landscape architecture has largely retreated to matters of styles and

physical appearances. Ian Hamilton Finlay, the accomplished poet and artist, who became a garden maker has,

however, done quite the opposite. Consequently, he found his own gardens to be in a continuity with eighteenth-

century landscape gardens such as Leasowes and Ermenonville — not to be slavishly copied but as a source for

renewal — while mostly being at odds with modern landscape architecture. Overall, he thoroughly experimented with

how ideas can be an inherent part of a garden, most notably with the use of words which speak to a ‘passer-by’. In all

cases the surroundings of the garden or a landscape and the ideas or the inscription of words are considered in relation

to each other. Sometimes we need to question our own assumption to understand it; in other instances it is made with

a strong sense of wit; or it is even alluding to a dialectical contradiction such as the supposed opposites between

nature and culture. In short, Finlay’s gardens are as much about ideas as things, as much about virtue as beauty.126

Unsurprisingly, the French Revolution also came to be one the recurring themes in Finlay’s oeuvre. In 1987 he created

for Documenta 8 in Kassel, Germany, a series of four full-size guillotines. They are aligned to frame our perception of a

temple in the distance (figure 5). Quotations relating to the French Revolution are inscribed on the blades of the

guillotines. For Finlay, however, to invoke this event is no mere historical curiosity, nor is it simply an additional

argument in favor of a conspicuous design solution as in other instances of modern landscape architecture. Instead, a

reference to French Revolution is conceived as a political statement as he urges us to consider the ongoing influence of

this event and how it predefines our own culture. Hopefully we all, like Finlay, feel this need to understand the past and

what came out of it.

Notes 1. Han Lörzing, De angst voor het nieuwe landschap: beschouwingen over landschapsontwerp en landschapsbeheer (‘s-

Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1982), pp. 27–30.

2. Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The Modern System of the Arts: A Study in the History of Aesthetics’, Journal of the History of

Ideas, 12/4, 1951, pp. 496–527, quote from p. 496.

3. Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, Medici gardens: from making to design (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

2008), p. 147.

4. D. R. Edward Wright, ‘Some Medici gardens of the Florentine Renaissance: an essay in post-aesthetic interpretation’,

in The Italian Garden: Art, Design and Culture, ed. John Dixon Hunt (Cambridge: Cambrdge University Press, 1996),

pp. 34–59. Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, Medici gardens: from making to design (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp. 88–98.

5. Lee W. Rensselaer, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting’, Art Bulletin, 22, 1940, p. 203.

6. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p.

219.

7. Paul Hazard, The European Mind, 1680–1715 (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1963).

8. Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1991), p. 2.

9. Jerome Stolnitz, ‘On the Origins of ‘Aesthetic Disinterestedness’’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 20/2,

1961, pp. 131–143, here especially p. 143.

10. Joseph Addison, ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’, The Spectator, 413 (24 June 1712).

11. Jerome Stolnitz, ‘Locke and the Categories of Value in Eighteenth Century British Aesthetic Theory’, Philosophy,

38/143, 1963, pp. 40–51, here especially p. 41.

12. Joseph Addison, ‘On the Pleasures of the Imagination’, The Spectator, 414 (25 June 1712).

13. Quoted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620–

1820 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), p. 121.

14. Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia Rustica: Or, the Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener’s Recreation, Vol. 3 (New

York: Garland, 1982), p. 3.

15. John Dixon Hunt, ‘Historical Excursus: Late Seventeenth-Century Garden Theory’, in Greater Perfections: The

Practice of Garden Theory (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 180–206.

16. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the

Infinite (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1959).

17. John Dixon Hunt, ‘Ut Pictura Poesis, Ut Pictura Hortus, and the Picturesque’, Word & Image: A Journal of

Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 1/1, 1985, pp. 87–107.

18. Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia Rustica: Or, the Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener’s Recreation, Vol. 1 (New

York: Garland, 1982), p. 87.

19. See also John Dixon Hunt, ‘Castle Howard Revisited’, in Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of

Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 19–46, for Wray Wood see especially pp. 33–37.

20. John Dryden, ‘Mr. Dryden’s Preface, with a Parallel of Poetry and Painting’, in The Art of Painting of Charles

Alphonse Du Fresnoy(1783), p. 146.

21. Quoted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620–

1820 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), p. 124.

22. Alexander Pope and William Warburton (ed.), The Works of Alexander Pope Esq., Vol. 4 (London: Printed for A.

Millar, J. and R. Tonson, C. Bathurst, H. Woodfall, R. Baldwin, W. Johnston, B. Law, T. Longman, T. Caslon, Johnson

and Davenport, and M. Richardson, 1766), p. 264.

23. Quoted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620–

1820 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988), p. 231.

24. William Gilpin, A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in

Buckinghamshire (1748) (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1748), p. 49.

25. Michael Charlesworth, ‘On meeting Hercules in Stourhead Garden’, The Journal of Garden History, 9/2, 1989, pp.

71–75.

26. Patrick Eyres, ‘Studley Royal: Garden of Hercules and Venus’, New Arcadian Journal, 20, 1985, pp. 4–12.

27. Quoted in Simon Pugh, Garden, Nature, Language (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press;

Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St Martin’s Press, 1988), p. 111.

28. John Barrell, ‘The Dangerous Goddess: Masculinity, Prestige and the Aesthetic in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain’,

in The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge (London: The Macmillan Press, 1992), pp. 63–87.

29. Edward S. Harwood, ‘Personal Identity and the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Garden’, The Journal of

Garden History, 13/1–2, 1993, pp. 36–48, here especially p. 40.

30. Thomas Frost, The life of Thomas, Lord Lyttelton (London: Tinsley Bros., 1876), p. 314.

31. Ibid., p. 314.

32. Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening (London: Printed for T. Payne and Son, 1771), p. 151.

33. David H. Solkin, Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (New

Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 1–2.

34. Ibid., p. 3.

35. Stephen Bending, ‘Re-Reading the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Garden’, Huntington Library Quarterly,

55/3, 1992, pp. 379–399, quote from p. 396.

36. John Barrell, ‘The Dangerous Goddess: Masculinity, Prestige and the Aesthetic in Early Eighteenth-Century Britain’,

in The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge (London: The Macmillan Press, 1992), pp. 63–87, here especially

p. 67.

37. Ibid., p. 70.

38. Joshua Reynolds and Edmond Malone, The works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, knight … : containing his discourses,

idlers, a journey to Flanders and Holland and his commentary on Du Fresnoy’s art of painting; printed from his revised

copies (with his last conections and additions in three volumes; to which is prefixed an account of the life and writings

of the author by Edmond Malone, 3 vols, Vol. 2 (London: Cadell, 1801), p. 134.

39. In the following book, for instance, one can find a description of many smaller ‘English gardens’ from that period in

the Southern Netherlands, what later became known as Belgium. All of these correspond to the general characteristics

as described in this article. Xavier Duquenne, Het park van Wespelaar en de Engelse tuin in België in de 18de

eeuw (Wespelaar: P. de Spoelberch, 2001), pp. 31–42.

40. Adrian von Buttlar, ‘Englische Gärten in Deutschland. Bemerkungen zu Modifikationen ihrer Ikonologie’, in ‘Sind

Briten Hier?’: Relations between British and Continental Art 1980–1880 (München: Fink, 1981), pp. 97–125, here

especially p. 102.

41. ‘Deutschland, das keine politische Revolution erlebte und dessen kleinteilige Staatenwelt noch weitgehend dem

Ancien régime verhaftet war, konnte dieser Manifestation einer aufgeklärten, frühliberalen Weltanschauung nur wenig

Spielraum bieten, die letztlicht doch den ‘großen republikanischen Bestrebungen des Geistes’ entsprungen war’. Ibid.,

quote from p. 100.

42. The point is well-taken in Urte Stobbe, ‘Landscape Garden or Lustgarten: Reinterpreting Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe in

Garden History’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 32/2, 2012, pp. 84–98, here especially p.

88.

43. Annie Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française moderne: de la raison classique à l’imagination créatrice, 1680–

1814 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994), pp. 489–787.

44. Thomas Blaikie, Janine Barrier, and Monique Mosser, Sur les terres d’un jardinier: journal de voyages 1775–

1792 (Besançon: Les éditions de l’imprimeur, 1997), p. 199.

45. Ibid., p. 262.

46. Jean Marie Morel, Théorie des jardins, ou, l’art des jardins de la nature (Paris: Panckoucke, 1802), p. cxxi.

47. A short overview on Jean-Marie Morel and his garden making within the context of the Enlightenment can be found

in Joseph Disponzio, ‘Introduction’, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 21/3–4, 2001.

48. Arthur Casaux Charles Young, Voyages en France, pendant les années 1787–88–89 et 90 entrepris plus

particulièrement pour s’assurer de l’état de l’agriculture, des richesses, des ressources et de la prospérité de cette

nation, Vol. 1 (Paris: Chez Buisson, 1793), p. 193.

49. Ibid., p. 199.

50. Quoted in Jean de Cayeux, Hubert Robert et les jardins (Paris: Herscher, 1987), p. 67.

51. Louis Philippe d’ Orléans Carmontelle, Jardin de Monceau près de Paris appartenant à son altesse sérénissime

monseigneur le Duc de Chartres (Paris: Delafosse, Née & Masquelier, 1779), p. 4.

52. Marc de Bombelles and Jacques Gury, ‘Journal de voyage en Grande Bretagne et en Irlande, 1784’, Studies on

Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 1989, p. 62.

53. Anne Van Ypersele and Paul Van Ypersele, Laken: een kasteel in het verlichte Europa (Tielt: Lannoo, 1991), p. 131.

54. I refer here to the French translation of his treatise: Christian Ludwig Stieglitz, Descriptions pittoresques de jardins

du goût le plus moderne (Leipzig: Voss, 1802), p. 3.

55. Charles Joseph Ligne, Jeroom Vercruysse, and Guy Basil, Coup d’oeil sur Beloeil: écrits sur les jardins et

l’urbanisme (Paris: Champion, 2004), p. 381.

56. René-Louis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1992), p. 95.

57. Claude-Henri Watelet and Joseph Disponzio (ed.), Essay on Gardens: A Chapter in the French

Picturesque (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p. 19.

58. Robert Edward Norton, The Beautiful Soul: Aesthetic Morality in the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 1995), p. ix.

59. Ibid., p. 21.

60. Ibid., p. 173.

61. Jean Starobinski, L’invention de la liberté, 1700–1789 (Paris: Gallimard, 2006), p. 13.

62. Quoted in Sophie Le Ménahèze and Michel Baridon, L’invention du jardin romantique en France 1761–

1808 (Neuilly-sur-Seine: Editions spiralinthe, 2001), p. 29.

63. This is suggested by Joseph Disponzio. See his introduction to Claude-Henri Watelet and Joseph Disponzio

(ed.), Essay on Gardens: A Chapter in the French Picturesque (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), p.

14.

64. In the English translation of this book, this is unhappily translated as ‘styles’ while in the original French language it

was described as ‘caractères’ (characters). Ibid., p. 35.

65. Ibid., pp. 41–45.

66. Anonymous, Promenade, ou, Itinéraire des jardins d’Ermenonville: auquel on a joint vingt-cing de leurs principales

vues (Paris: Mérigot père, 1788), p. 15.

67. John Dixon Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe (New York, NY: Thames & Hudson, 2002), p. 109.

68. The involvement of painters, architects and poets in the gardens of this period is well-known. An example of the

influence of philosophers on the creation of these gardens is the English garden at Wespelaer (Belgium). The garden

was created with the advice of the philosopher Matthieu Verlat (1743–1821). Xavier Duquenne, Het park van

Wespelaar en de Engelse tuin in België in de 18de eeuw (Wespelaar: P. de Spoelberch, 2001), pp. 61–62.

69. Joseph-Antoine-Joachim Cérutti, Les jardins de Betz, poème accompagné de notes instructives sur les travaux

champêtres, sur les arts, les lois, les révolutions, la noblesse, le clergé, etc (Paris: Desenne, 1792), p. 2.

70. Jacques Delille and P.-F. Tissot, Oeuvres de Delille: precedes dúne notice sur par vie et ses ouvrages. Tome VII:

les jardins — l’homme des champs. (Paris: 1833), p. 110.

71. Ibid., p. 111.

72. J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London; New York:

Routledge, 1997), p. 44.

73. Jia Ning, ‘Representation of the Other in Desert de Retz as Reflections of French Enlightenment

Thought’, Intercultural Communication Studies, 21/3, 2012, pp. 108–123.

74. Margaret Fields Denton, ‘Death in French Arcady: Nicolas Poussin’s The Arcadian Shepherds and Burial Reform in

France c. 1800’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 36/2, 2003, pp. 195–216, here especially p. 201.

75. ‘Avec l’écrasement de la Terreur en Thermidor au contraire, s’ouvre une période d’une vintaine d’années, où, dans

l’accomplissmeent ou l’étouffement de virtualités apparues au siècle précédent, se réalisent les conditions proprement

favorables à l’émérgence de l’esthétique moderne. Aussi faudrait-il poursuivre cette enquête jusqu’à la fin de l’Empire,

afin de voir se mettre en place, dans la foulée des assemblées révolutionnaires, mais aussi contre leurs tentatives les

plus hardies, les cadres institutionnels de la vie intellectuelle et artistique qui seront ceux de l’âge romantique, et

d’entendre formuler nettement les principles d’une esthétique de la subjectivité créatrice, soit de l’esthétique

proprement dite’. Annie Becq, Genèse de l’esthétique française moderne: de la raison classique à l’imagination

créatrice, 75. 1680–1814 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994), p. 789.

76. John Dixon Hunt, ‘The Picturesque Legacy to Modernist Landscape Architecture’, in Gardens and the Picturesque:

Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 285.

77. Ibid., p. 290.

78. Isabelle Leveque, ‘L’oeuvre de François Duvillers (1801–1887): quelques visions prismatiques sur les pratiques de

jardins au XIXe siècle’, Polia: revue de l’art des jardins, 1, 2004, pp. 17–41.

79. Joseph Disponzio, ‘Jean-Marie Morel and the Invention of Landscape Architecture’, in Tradition and Innovation in

French Garden Art: Chapters of a New History, eds John Dixon Hunt and Michel Conan (Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 135–159.

80. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des

Métiers, Vol. 12 (Paris: Briasson, 1751), p. 212.

81. René-Louis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1992), p. 1.

82. Ibid., p. 115.

83. Louis-Eustache Audot, Traité de la composition et de l’ornement des jardins (Paris: Audot, 1839), p. 78.

84. George Mason, An essay on design in gardening, first published in MDCCLXVIII, now greatly augmented, also a

revisal of several later publications on the same subject (London: C. Roworth, 1795), p. 96.

85. Chunglin Kwa, ‘Alexander von Humboldt’s Invention of the Natural Landscape’, The European Legacy: Toward New

Paradigms, 10/2, 2005, pp. 149–162.

86. Quoted in Josef Schmithüsen, ‘Was ist eine Landschaft?’ in Das Wesen der Landschaft, ed. Karlheinz Paffen

(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlich Buchgesellschaft, 1973), p. 169.

87. Jacques Lalos, De la composition des parcs et jardins pittoresques (Paris: Lottin, 1817), p. ii.

88. John Dixon Hunt, ‘The Picturesque Legacy to Modernist Landscape Architecture’, in Gardens and the Picturesque:

Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 287.

89. René-Louis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1992), p. 19.

90. François-Henri Harcourt and Ernest de Ganay, Traité de la décoration: des dehors, des jardins et des parcs (Paris:

Émile-Paul Frères, 1919), p. 81.

91. Jacques Lalos, De la composition des parcs et jardins pittoresques (Paris: Lottin, 1817), p. 6.

92. Gabriel Thouin, Plans raisonnés de toutes les espèces de jardins (Paris: chez l’auteur, 1820), p. 8.

93. Nicolas Vergnaud, L’Art de créer les jardins, contenant les préceptes généraux de cet art, leur application

développée sur des vues perspectives, coupes et élévations, par des exemples choisis dans les jardins les plus célèbres

de France et d’Angleterre et le tracé pratique de toute espèce de jardins (Paris: Roret, 1835), p. iii.

94. The following text was also translated into French. John Claudius Loudon, ‘Notes and Reflections made during a

Tour through Part of France and Germany, in the Autumn of the Year 1828’, in The Gardener’s Magazine, and Register

of Rural & Domestic Improvement, Vol. 9 (London: Longman, Rees, Orome, Brown and Green, 1833), pp. 229–269.

95. Louis-Eustache Audot, Traité de la composition et de l’ornement des jardins (Paris: Audot, 1839), p. vi.

96. Alphonse Denis, Traité complet de l’horticulture pour les grands et les petits jardins, précédé de la botanique

simplifiée (Paris: Challamel, 1846), pp. 422–423.

97. Edouard André, L’art des jardins: traité général de la composition des parcs et jardins (Paris: G. Masson, 1879), p.

85.

98. Alphonse Denis, Traité complet de l’horticulture pour les grands et les petits jardins, précédé de la botanique

simplifiée (Paris: Challamel, 1846), p. 422.

99. Pierre Boitard, Manuel complet de l’architecte des jardins; ou l’art de les composer et de les décorer (Paris: Roret,

1834).

100. Adolphe Alphand, Les promenades de Paris: histoire — description des embellissements — dépenses de création

et d’entretien des Bois de Boulogne et de Vincennes, Champs-Élysées — Parcs — squares — boulevards — places

plantées, Étude sur l’art des jardins et arboretum (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press: Marquand Library,

Princeton University: Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, 1984), p. xlvi.

101. Luisa Limido, L’Art des jardins sous le second empire: Jean-Pierre Barillet-Deschamps, 1824–1873 (Seyssel:

Champ Vallon, 2002), pp. 255–260.

102. ‘L’industrialisation étant conçue comme l’expression la plus haute de la modernité, son application dans le milieu

de la création paysagère est considérée comme une conquête importante et prestigieuse qui fait la fierté des nouveaux

professionnels. … La création, depuis toujours la base de l’art paysager, va se borner, à partir de ce moment, à

l’application de règles esthétiques pré-définies’. Ibid., pp. 247.

103. Alexandre de Laborde, Description des nouveaux jardins de la France et de ses anciens châteaux mêlée

d’observations sur la vie de la campagne et la composition des jardin (Paris: impr. de Delance, 1808), p. 135.

104. Jean-Louis Ferri de St Constant, Londres et les Anglais, Vol. 3 (Paris: Fain, 1804), p. 200.

105. Ibid., p. 203.

106. Karl Ludwig Woltmann, Geschichte und Politik, 1, 1800, p. 3.

107. François-René Chateaubriand and Robert Baldick, The Memoirs of Chateaubriand (New York: Knopf, 1961), p.

174.

108. Schiller’s view on garden making is most fully expressed in his article ‘Über den Gartenkalender auf das Jahr

1795’. Friedrich Schiller, Schillers sämmtliche Werke, Vol. 10 (Stuttgart & Tübingen: Cotta, 1838), p. 429.

109. Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, Essai sur la nature, le but et les moyens de l’imitation dans les

beaux-arts(Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1823), p. 149.

110. Ippolito Pindemonte and Emmanuel Phelippe-Beaulieux, Dissertation sur les jardins anglais et sur l’invention

réclamée par l’Italie. Traduit de l’italien d’Hippolyte Pindemonte, par M. Phelippe Beaulieux (Nantes: impr. de C.

Mellinet, 1842), p. 11.

111. Jean Bernard Le Blanc, Lettres De Monsieur L’Abbé Le Blanc, Historiographe Des Bastimens Du Roi, Vol. 2 (Lyon:

Detaroche, 1758), p. 216.

112. René-Louis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1992), p. 13.

113. Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Chicago: The University

of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 2.

114. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: 1789–1848 (Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1962), p. 1.

115. The concept ‘the past of the present’ is borrowed from Agnes Heller, A Theory of History (London; Boston:

Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).

116. John Dixon Hunt, ‘The Picturesque Legacy to Modernist Landscape Architecture’, in Gardens and the Picturesque:

Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 285–303.

117. Tom Turner, ‘The Blood of Philosopher-Kings’, in City as Landscape: A Post Post-Modern View of Design and

Planning (London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), pp. 141–153, quote from p. 141.

118. Ibid., pp. 141–153, quote from p. 153.

119. Ian Thompson, Ecology, Community, and Delight: Sources of Values in Landscape Architecture (London, New

York: E & FN Spon, 2000), p. 35.

120. See, for instance, the chapter entitled ‘Nature’ in Tim Richardson and Martha Schwartz, Avant Gardeners: 50

Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2008), pp. 145–152.

121. Bernadette Blanchon-Caillot, Catherine Dee, Anna Jørgensen, Karsten Jørgensen, Bianca Maria Rinaldi, and Kelly

Shannon, ‘Editorial Ethics/Aesthetics’, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 7/2, 2012, pp. 4–5.

122. Elizabeth K. Meyer, ‘Sustaining Beauty. The Performance of Appearance: A Manifesto in Three Parts’, Journal of

Landscape Architecture, 3/1, 2008, pp. 6–23.

123. Elizabeth K. Meyer, ‘The Expanded Field of Landscape Architecture’, in Ecological design and planning, eds George

F. Thompson and Frederick R. Steiner (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), pp. 45–79, here especially p. 46.

124. Arthur Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 111.

125. David Marshall, ‘Gardens and the Death of Art: Robert Irwin’s Getty Garden’, Studies in the History of Gardens &

Designed Landscapes, 24/3, 2004, pp. 215–228, quote from p. 226.

126. I am indebted to the following book for understanding the garden making of Ian Hamilton Finlay. John Dixon

Hunt, Nature Over Again: The Garden Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (London: Reaktion Books, 2008).