1800-1810 : the Democracy of the Picturesque
Francesca Orestano
In the years between 1800 and 1810 the picturesque came of age. This decade was crucial to the
reception of picturesque aesthetics both in England and abroad. On the one hand, picturesque theory
met with intense debate, criticism, adaptations, both in Europe and in the United States; on the other
hand the very word “picturesque” – what it stood for, its definition, the theory implied, its
implementation – spread like a fashionable passepartout towards areas which directly appropriated
the picturesque idea, while translating it into different languages, and codes. The word ‘democracy’ is
thus used here to describe the wide cultural vulgarization of the picturesque as implied by Dowling’s
study, and also according to the scenario of mass-visual culture described by Jonathan Crary.1
This contribution does not focus on the first fifty years of the picturesque, but tries instead to
trace the ways of and the reasons for the picturesque cultural dissemination which takes place
between 1800 and the first decade of the new century. Christopher Hussey maintained that “roughly
between 1730 and 1830” the picturesque was a phase through which every art passed :
One of the most curious characteristics of the picturesque phase is the succession with
which it affected the various arts. Poetry had “had” the picturesque and recovered from it,
sixty years before architecture caught it. Intermediately gardening, travel and the novel
were in turn infected. 2
While one may not agree with the stages of this periodisation, the idea of a picturesque
infection, spreading contagiously across the arts, is entirely acceptable, insofar as a strictly visual
code of composition proves contagious to areas traditionally enclosed in verbal hermeneutics. But
Hussey in 1927 could not focus on the first formalist phase of the picturesque: the anonymous
Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in
Buckinghamshire (1748) had not yet been credited to the pen of William Gilpin3 and the long work of
the Reverend, culminating with his controversial Three Essays,4 was entirely forgotten, or known
through the criticism of his detractors and the burlesque satire of those who exploited its popularity. A
1
DOWLING, L., The Vulgarization of Art: the Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy. Charlottesville,
University Press, of Virginia, 1996; CRARY, J., Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in
the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Ma., MIT Press, 1993.
2
HUSSEY C., The Picturesque. Studies in a Point of View. London, Putnam, 1927, p.4-5.
3
The attribution was in TEMPLEMAN W.D., The Life and Work of William Gilpin (1724-1804), Master of the
Picturesque and Vicar of Boldre, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, XXIV, 3-4. Urbana, University of
Illinois Press, 1939.
4
GILPIN W., Three Essays : on Picturesque Beauty ; On Picturesque Travel ; and on Sketching Landscape : to
which is added a Poem, on Landscape Painting (1792; 1794 edn.) in ANDREWS M., ed., The Picturesque.
Literary Sources and Documents. 3 vols. Mountfield, Helm Information 1994, vol. II, p.5-60.
1
few details, however, must be brought forth in order to shed light on its origin, its spreading fashion,
and the reasons which terminated the first phase of the picturesque.
The picturesque and visual formalism
As regards its origins, suffice it to say that the definition of “picturesque beauty” dates back to a
sunny summer afternoon in 1748, in the surroundings of a famous English landscape garden, Stowe:
the term was used to describe a monument, an artificial ruin, rich in decorative, visual value, yet unlike other monuments - deprived of all inscription or reference to well-known and instructive
episodes in history or literature. In the philosophical dialogue between two imaginary characters,
Callophilus and Polypthon, two friends visiting the gardens at Stowe, the appreciation of picturesque
beauty already implies an ethical dilemma :
Polypth. Yes, indeed, I think the Ruin a great Addition to the Beauty of the Lake. There is
something so vastly picturesque and pleasing to the Imagination in such Objects, that they
are a great Addition to every Landskip. And yet perhaps it would be hard to assign a
reason, why we are more taken with Prospects of this ruinous kind, than with Views of
Plenty and Prosperity in their greatest Perfection: Benevolence and Good-nature,
methinks, are more concerned in the latter kind.
Calloph. Yes: but cannot you make a distinction between natural and moral Beauties?5
The dialogue already points out that benevolence has nothing to do with picturesque beauty.
Ethics and aesthetics are at odds. Reverend William Gilpin’s concept of one different species of
beauty was characterised by its exclusive emphasis on the visual, on the appetite of the eye, whetted
by formal elements such as contrast and variety, and deprived of any moral project or issue, indeed
not concerned with human benevolence.
In 1792, in his Three Essays which were already supposed to clarify all previous
misunderstandings, Gilpin warned his readers:
… we admirers of the picturesque are a little misunderstood with regard to our general
intention. […] Whereas, in fact, we speak a different language. […] In what, then, do we
offend? At the expence of no other species of beauty, we merely endeavour to illustrate,
and recommend one species more; which, tho among the most interesting, hath never yet,
so far as I know, been made the set object of investigation.6
Picturesque beauty did not occupy the area devoted to ideal beauty, nor its classical morality.
For Reverend Gilpin, picturesque beauty resided exclusively in the region of visible surfaces –
5
GILPIN W. A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Cobham at Stow in
Buckinghamshire (1748). Introduction by John Dixon Hunt. The Augustan Reprint Society, 176. Los Angeles:
The University of California Press, 1976, p. 5.
6
GILPIN W., Three Essays (1792; 1794 edn.) in ANDREWS M., ed., The Picturesque. Literary Sources and
Documents, cit., vol. II, p.5-60.
2
whether scenes of nature or images – where the picturesque eye finds its reward: obviously, he adds,
“we have scarce ground to hope, that every admirer of picturesque beauty, is an admirer also of the
beauty of virtue”.7 Picturesque beauty involves amusement, visual curiosity – an attention to the
formal qualities of landscape such as ruggedness, intricacy, claro-obscuro, which can be heightened
with Gilpin’s little rules for composition, and best captured by the genre of the sketch – a minor genre
indeed – which does not require academic training nor expensive materials, such as oils and canvas,
but just an album and a pencil. Picturesque beauty could be observed and sketched in several parts of
England, especially the River Wye, the Lake District, Scotland – the destinations of Gilpin’s summer
tours which subsequently provided him with material for his ‘Observations relative chiefly to
Picturesque beauty…’ illustrated by fine monochrome aquatints, in sepia or indigo.8 His Observations
on the River Wye, illustrated with the new aquatint process, appeared in 1782, 1789, 1792, and twice
in 1800! Again, Gilpin’s Observations in Cumberland and Westmorland, lavishly illustrated, were
published in 1786, 1788, 1792, 1808. We perceive here that the picturesque, as Gilpin intended it,
was meant to transcend the boundaries of the landscape garden, and to move from the private to the
public sphere, from the exclusive to the popular, in order to become a middle-class art category,
which any excursionist or sketcher could easily handle. In addition to the tours in several parts of
Britain, Gilpin’s Three Essays provide picturesque tools for non-academic amateur artists: women
have access to picturesque aesthetics, and learn to sketch a landscape with rapid strokes on the pages
of their albums. In order to compose a lively sketch, full of variety and contrast, ruggedness and
intricacy, ruins provide the best subject because of their fragmentary condition. For Gilpin an elegant
piece of smooth white classical architecture is not picturesque, because of its regularity and
symmetry :
Should we wish to give it picturesque beauty, we must use the mallet, instead of the
chisel; we must beat down one half of it, deface the other, and throw the mutilated
members around in heaps. In short, from a smooth building we must turn it into a rough
ruin.9
These words pave the way to the controversy which in 1794 pitted against Gilpin’s idea a new
concept of the picturesque fraught with moral associations. Picturesque values alone offend: the dry
contemplation of the ruin, the formalist assessment of its visual intricacy, have to be enhanced by
becoming moral feelings.
We witness here the clash between two centuries, two systems of thought, between the aesthetic
eye and the philosophical mind: although a clash initially, this circumstance will eventually determine
7
Ibidem, p. 21.
For a complete bibliography of Gilpin’s tours, see BARBIER C.P., William Gilpin. His Drawings, Teaching and
Theory of the Picturesque. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1963. Also see ORESTANO F., Paesaggio e finzione.
William Gilpin, il Pittoresco, la visibilità nella letteratura inglese, Milano, Unicopli, 2000, especially
“Bibliografia”, p. 257-277.
9
GILPIN W., Three Essays, op. cit., p. 8.
8
3
the picturesque aporia, and in the long run it will endow the picturesque with the double strength
arising from vision and design, or from verbal morality and visual formalism.
But before the completion of this process, Reverend Gilpin had to be consigned to a destiny of
immediate scathing criticism, followed by satire and eventually the silence of oblivion. Indeed
Gilpin’s concept of interesting mutilation and scattered limbs, if acceptable as a metaphor for
picturesque composition and ruggedness of design, involved a tangible threat of destruction if literally
applied to buildings, houses and flourishing gardens – not to mention its sadistic side, rather evident
within the philosophy of associations which Archibald Alison had been successfully preaching since
1790, and which would horrify readers and sentimental tourists alike.10
Criticism around Gilpin’s picturesque theory is voiced, initially, by estate owners and landscape
gardeners, all equally opposed to mutilation, ruin, and decay. Humphry Repton remarkably coined a
new word, “gardenesque”, with the aim of promoting good healthy plant-growing, instead of felling
trees and adorning gardens with their scattered limbs. Uvedale Price objected to using the principles
of painting in the context of landscape improvement11 and Richard Payne Knight refashioned the
aesthetic category as a category of taste12 which may best be handled, in unison, by the optical nerve
and art expertise of the connoisseur. It is easy to see in Knight’s theory the lure of social distinction :
the connoisseur – who is also a grand tourist and an art collector – is going to view with supercilious
irony the application of Gilpin’s “little rules” for assessing and sketching domestic landscape. And
not only are the class rewards of connoisseurship connected with picturesque taste. Psychological
associations, emotions, refined feelings find in picturesque ruins the most melancholy, attractive, and
evocative object.
The storm of criticism and debate aroused by Gilpin’s theory in the years immediately before
and after 1800, and especially the controversy with Price, Knight, and Repton, are responsible for the
transformation of Gilpin’s “picturesque beauty” into “picturesqueness” and finally into a category of
taste. My point is that this transformation, although started in the heat of personal disagreement, is
was ultimately effective in adapting the picturesque idea to much vaster areas of morality and culture,
to the Romantic feeling for nature and to the sentimental nostalgia of the Victorian age, which
nevertheless moulded public parks, gardens and cemeteries in eclectic picturesque style. The decade
10
ALISON A., Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790), in ANDREWS M., ed., The Picturesque.
Literary Sources and Documents. 3 vols. Mountfield, Helm Information 1994.
11
PRICE U., Essays on the Picturesque, As Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful, and on the Use of
Studying Pictures for the Purpose of improving real Landscape. London, 1810.
12
KNIGHT R.P., The Landscape. A Didactic Poem (1794), and An Analytical Enquiry upon the Principles of
Taste.(1805) London, Payne and White, 1808.
4
1800-1810 refashioned the old formalist phase and ultimately granted the picturesque a long-lasting
life in the aesthetic democracy of the new century.13
A decade of controversy
Not unexpectedly then, as a reaction against Gilpin’s 1792 Three Essays, 1794 was the year of
a controversy among Uvedale Price, Richard Payne Knight, and Humphry Repton : but Gilpin was
the real culprit.14 Knight’s The Landscape. A Didactic Poem in Three Books, Addressed to Uvedale
Price, Esq (1794) opened the hostilities. Repton intervened with A Letter to Uvedale Price, Esq
(1795) ; Price replied with A Letter to H. Repton, Esq., on the Application of the Practice as well as
the Principles of Landscape-painting to Landscape Gardening (1795) and with his Essay on the
Picturesque, as Compared with the Sublime ad the Beautiful, and on the Use of studying Pictures
with the Purpose of Improving real landscape (!794; 1810). Knight produced a second edition of The
Landscape with a note for Price, who replied with A Dialogue on the Distinct Characters of the
Picturesque and the Beautiful in Answer to the Objections of Mr Knight (1801). Walter John Hipple
has devoted two chapters in his volume on eighteenth-century aesthetics to these picturesque
skirmishes, with the aim of “restor[ing] the theories of the picturesque to some measure of
philosophic respectability”15: indeed when Price placed it halfway between the beautiful and the
sublime, the picturesque appeared to be a hybrid category, less pure, less morally consistent, less easy
to define. According to Hipple, “Gilpin had left picturesque theory involved in paradox”16 and his
emphasis on the picturesque controversy registers the perplexing attempt at reconciling the
Reverend’s formalist idea with cultural practices which seemed to diminish its philosophic
respectability – while in fact they did enhance its cultural dissemination.
Despite his interest in the picturesque, and his careful reading of Gilpin’s work, Uvedale Price
remarked that grounds and parks “left in a state of picturesque neglect”17 admirable in paintings, gave
a peculiar aspect to the face of the country:
But however highly I may think of the art of painting, compared with that of improving,
nothing can be farther from my intention (and I wish to impress it in the strongest manner
on the reader’s mind) than to recommend the study of pictures in preference to that of
nature, much less to the exclusion of it. […] We are therefore to profit by the experience
13
See DOWLING L. in The Vulgarization of Art : The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy, Charlottesville,
University Press of Virginia, 1996.
14
In HIPPLE W.J. jr., in The Beautiful, the Sublime, & the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic
Theory. Carbondale, The Southern Illinois University Press, 1957.
15
Ibidem, p. 191.
16
Ibid.,, p. 202.
17
PRICE U., Essay on the Picturesque, in ANDREWS M., ed. The Picturesque, cit., vol. II, p. 72- 141.
5
contained in pictures, but not to content ourselves with that experience only; not are we to
consider even those [pictures] of the highest class as absolute and infallible standards…18
The idea of “picturesqueness” expounded by Price describes a quality which equally applies to
sublime and beautiful objects: his examples are taken not only from the visual arts, but also from
sculpture and poetry, both Latin and Greek.
There are few words whose meaning has been less accurately determined than that of the
word picturesque […] but the picturesque, considered as a separate character, has never
yet been accurately distinguished from the sublime and the beautiful; though as no one
has ever pretended that they are synonymous […] such a distinction must exist.19
Price’s analysis has specific value in the context of the various national adaptations of the
picturesque idea addressed by the present collection of essays:
The Italian pittoresco is, I imagine, of earlier date than either the English or the French
word, […] pittoresque. Pittoresco is derived, not like picturesque, from the thing painted,
but from the painter; and this difference is not wholly immaterial. The English word
refers to the performance, and the objects most suited to it: the Italian and French words
have a reference to the turn of mind common to painters. […] The English word naturally
draws the reader’s mind towards pictures […] and what is in truth only an illustration of
picturesqueness.20
In his essay Price proceeded by finding a number of objects in real nature – wild asses, shaggy
dogs, old mills, gypsies and beggars – whom he identified as picturesque. But as an estate owner, he
refuseed to ruin his property in order to make it look picturesque. The task of defending the
professional skills of a gardener would then be Humphry Repton’s responsibility :
If therefore the painter’s landscape be indispensable to the perfection of gardening, it
would surely be far better to paint it on canvas at the end of an avenue, […]than to
sacrifice the health, cheerfulness and comfort of a country residence, to the wild but
pleasing scenery of a painter’s imagination.21
For Repton, picturesque practices had nothing to do with gardening : “I cannot admit the
propriety of its application to landscape gardening; because ‘beauty’ and not ‘picturesqueness’ is the
chief object of modern improvement”.22 Thus Repton struck a “gardenesque” compromise between
the utilitarian law of his trade and the picturesque fashion.
But Gilpin’s idea underwent the most long-lasting and remarkable transformation when
Richard Payne Knight joined the discussion and refashioned the aesthetic category of Price as a
category of taste, at first in The Landscape. A Didactic Poem (1794), written from the point of view
18
Ibidem, p. 73.
Ibid.,, p. 81-82.
20
Ibid.,, p. 63.
21
REPTON H., A Letter to Uvedale Price. Originally printed in Repton’s Sketches and Hints on Landscape
Gardening (1795). In M. ANDREWS, ed. The Picturesque, cit., vol. II, p. 199-204.
22
Ibidem, p. 200.
19
6
of an estate owner who scans his possessions in search of picturesque objects. Then he gave full
treatment to the concept in An Analytical Enquiry upon the Principles of Taste, published in 1805.23
Knight started his survey by analysing sensations, following on the path traced by Locke,
Berkeley and Hume. But his empiricism was also influenced by Alison’s theory of associations,
which are the trait-d’union connecting sensuous perceptions with memory and emotions.
The magnificent compositions of landscape are indeed spectacles of a higher class; and
afford pleasures of a more exalted kind; but only a small part of those pleasures are
merely sensual; the venerable ruin, the retired cottage, the beetling rock, and limpid
stream, having charms for the imagination as well as for the sense; and often bringing
into the mind pleasing trains of ideas besides those, which their impressions upon the
organs of sense immediately excite.24
Thus Knight crosses the gap between the optical nerve, stimulated by the intricate objects it
views, and ideas charming to the imagination. Speaking of the purely visual sensations which attract
the eye, he takes into consideration those objects, indeed picturesque, which “display to the eye
intricacy of parts and variety of tint and surface”25 and gives us the usual list of trunks, mosses and
lichens, of buildings “mouldering into ruin”. He admits that elements of visual contrast and variety
qualify almost all those objects in nature and art which “my friend Mr Price has so elegantly
described as picturesque”. Painting, he warns, only imitates the visible qualities of bodies, and there
are objects which “may be pleasing to the eye, but otherwise offensive”26: decayed pollard tress,
rotten thatch, tattered and worn-out dirty garments, a smelly fish or flesh market. Painters provide
pleasure with representations in which “a principle of association”27 overcomes offensive sensations
and leads toward a more rewarding art experience. This has to do with what Knight describes as our
“faculty of improved perception”28, which discriminates the impressions of the organs of sense, and
generates “all refinement of taste” : “All refinement of taste, therefore, in the liberal arts, arises, in the
first instance, from improved perception.”29 We have therefore got to the crucial passage, where taste,
the product of improved perception, dictates whether one may find any pleasure in sensations and, if
so, of what kind. To improve on perception means to improve taste. To achieve this end, one has to
acquire a “knowledge of the mind” : people of taste are those capable of associations of ideas, hence
those who are most conversant with painting, sculpture, Venetian masters, poetry, and the ideas
behoving to these arts.
Much of the pleasure, which we receive from painting, sculpture, music, poetry, &c.
23
KNIGHT R.P., The Landscape. A Didactic Poem (1794) ; An Analytical Enquiry upon the Principles of
Taste.(1805), London, Payne and White, 1808.
24
KNIGHT R.P., An Analytical Inquiry..., p. 63.
25
Ibidem, p. 68.
26
Ibid.,, p. 70.
27
Ibid.,, p. 71.
28
Ibid.,, p. 99.
29
Ibid.,, p. 100.
7
arises from our associating other ideas with those immediately excited by them. Hence
the productions of these arts are never thoroughly enjoyed but by persons, whose minds
are enriched by a variety of kindred and corresponding imagery […] Of this description
are the objects and circumstances called picturesque: for, except in the instances, before
explained, of pleasing effects of colour, light, and shadow, they afford no pleasure but to
persons conversant with the art of painting, and sufficiently skilled in it to distinguish,
and be really delighted with its real excellencies.30
Unlike Gilpin, Knight does not consider the picturesque a skill anybody can learn just by
applying some little rules of contrast and variety, nor the amusement deriving from a summer
excursion to the Lakes. In his view, the picturesque becomes a class affair, a matter of distinction, the
exclusive leisure of a few kindred spirits. Refinement of taste makes them able to judge, with the
exclusion of those who – lacking taste – deserve ridicule.
The sensual pleasure arising from viewing objects and compositions, which we call
picturesque, may be felt equally by all mankind in proportion to the correctness and
sensibility of their organs of sight; for it is wholly independent of their being picturesque,
or after the manner of painters. But this very relation to painting, expressed by the word
picturesque, is that, which affords the whole pleasure derived from association; which
can therefore only be felt by persons who have correspondent ideas to associate. 31
Knight has to admit, like every theorist and critic of the picturesque, that the word, “now
become extremely common and familiar in our tongue […] is very frequently employed
improperly.”32 Any attempt to analyse the word picturesque would be “vain and impracticable”:
therefore he proceeds by giving the readers a list of picturesque things, among which pastoral scenes,
romantic scenes, mouldering ruins of castles, abbeys, ancient temples and aqueducts are all
picturesque in the highest degree.
Knight’s ponderous work, divided into three parts, which respectively discuss Sensations,
Associations of Ideas and Passions, will have a long-lasting impact by endowing the dry formalism of
the first picturesque with psychological associations, and including both under the judgement of taste.
If we wonder about the relevance of Knight’s concept of taste to the general reception of the
picturesque in the nineteenth century, we find that taste becomes the category on whose grounds
Romantic poets will shed appropriate tears on picturesque ruins, and also, at once, the category which
brands with ridicule the affected taste of self-appointed art-connoisseurs, the cheap taste of Sunday
tourists or the ghastly bad taste of picturesque improvers.
Picturesque and technological reproduction
30
Ibid.,, p. 146.
Ibid.,, p. 152.
32
Ibid.,, p. 153.
31
8
Picturesque images never aspired to the aura of great art works. From its very beginning the
sketch was a simple affair: it required no art academy, but just an amateurish interest, a few
guidelines and drawing tools. Yet in the years between 1800 and 1810, picturesque images showed
their full potential as far as technological reproduction was concerned : the sketches made by Gilpin
would influence landscape drawing, etching, print and aquatint, disseminating all over Europe, and
beyond, standardised views of hills and clouds, ruined towers and cataracts.
When Reverend Gilpin died, in 1804, his brother, Sawrey Gilpin, keeps kept on publishing the
Reverend’s tours, actually revamping some old work which had not been previously printed:
Observations on the Coasts of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent, relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty:
made in the Summer of the Year 1774 appears in 1804,33 and Observations on Several Parts of the
Counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. Also on Several Parts of North Wales; relative
chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, in Two Tours, the former made in 1769..., the latter in...1773 in 1809.34
From these ‘old tours’ we evince the popularity reached by Gilpin’s books: the volumes were
expensive but they attracted publishers and the reading public alike. Carl Paul Barbier has given a
detailed account of Gilpin’s work with the illustrations of his printed tours, which after having been
circulated in manuscript form, were eventually published when the secret of the aquatint process was
discovered. R. Blamire was the publisher; the first etchings from Gilpin’s drawings and sketches were
made by Sawrey Gilpin, John Warwick Smith, and Samuel Alken. In 1796 Blamire went bankrupt,
but Cadell & Davies immediately stepped in, and went on publishing more editions of the Tour of the
Lakes, the Scottish Tour, the Western Tour, and the Remarks on Forest Scenery.35
Gilpin had started a very profitable commercial venture : his tours, with their brilliant
illustrations, were indeed the means which propagated the picturesque into the nineteenth century,
and determined its cultural success.
The story of the first picturesque publications culminated with the images collected as Gilpin’s
Day, a portfolio which “testifies to Gilpin’s popularity for some years after his death”.36 In 1802
Gilpin had sold an album of twenty-four landscapes, entitled “Morning, Noon and Evening”, and six
other landscapes. From these drawings, Edward Orme published in 1810, six years after Gilpin’s
death, The Last Work Published by the Rev. William Gilpin... representing the effect of a Morning, a
33
GILPIN W. and GILPIN S., Observations on the Coasts of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent, relative chiefly to
Picturesque Beauty: made in the Summer of the Year 1774. London, 1804.
34
GILPIN W., Observations on Several Parts of the Counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. Also on
Several Parts of North Wales; relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, in Two Tours, the former made in 1769...,
the latter in...1773. London, 1809.
35
BARBIER C.P., William Gilpin. His Drawings, Teaching and Theory of
the
Picturesque. Oxford,
Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 83.
36
Ibidem, p. 84.
9
Noon Tide, and an Evening Sun.37 The drawings had been converted into large oblong aquatints by J.
Hamble and M. Dubourg. Again, some uncoloured sets of these aquatints were reprinted in 1811.
Then John Heaviside Clark, the author of books on watercolour and colouring technique, used these
same aquatints in a sumptuous publication, A Practical Illustration of Gilpin’s Day, representing the
various Effects on Landscape Scenery from Morning till Night, in Thirty Designs from Nature; by the
Rev. W.m Gilpin... With Instructions in, and Explanation of, the Improved Method of Colouring, and
Painting in Water Colours (1811).38 This publication was successfully reissued in 1824, with “flashes
of lightning or a double rainbow. Gilpin, who had carefully avoided the direct representation of such
natural phenomena, would not have approved of this attempt to bring his drawings in line with
popular taste”.39 Thus Barbier overlooks the fact that this very process of technological reproduction
was something Gilpin himself had wanted, started, encouraged, made popular; that in the years after
his death his drawings and aquatints were to generate an ever-increasing number of reproductions:
and finally that these ‘popular’ reproductions indicate that the demand for picturesque landscape was
spreading from the selective connoisseur to a more popular audience.
Picturesque laughter – and tears
The third factor marking the decade 1800-1810 and apt to modify the reception of the
picturesque is the comic afterlife enjoyed by the Reverend. After Blamire, Cadell & Davies, and John
and Josiah Boydell, the printer Rudolph Ackermann in 1808 “opened a rival shop” in London, where
aquatints were sold. At the end of the decade, the comic verse by William Combe, The Tour of
Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. A Poem, already a success in the Poetical Magazine in
1809-1811, met with the genial caricatures provided by Thomas Rowlandson : the printer Ackermann
had hit a success which would be repeated at home and abroad, and for many years to come.40
37
[ GILPIN W.]. The Last Work Published by the Rev. William Gilpin... representing the effect of a Morning, a
Noon Tide, and an Evening Sun. London, 1810.
38
[GILPIN W.], CLARK J.H., ed. A Practical Illustration of Gilpin’s Day, representing the various Effects on
Landscape Scenery from Morning till Night, in Thirty Designs from Nature; by the Rev. W.m Gilpin... With
Instructions in, and Explanation of, the Improved Method of Colouring, and Painting in Water Colours.
London, 1811.
39
BARBIER C.P., op. cit., p. 85.
40
COMBE W., The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque (1809) in COMBE W., Doctor Syntax three
Tours in Search of the Picturesque, Consolation, and a Wife. London, John Camden Hotten, n.d. After
appearing in the Poetical Magazine in 1809-1811, Combe’s poem becomes a success, illustrated by 30 aquatints
by Thomas Rowlandson, and printed by Rudolph Ackermann. In 1819 nine editions have already been printed;
Ackermann reprints it in 1828, 1838, 1844, 1865. Other publishers get hold of it: Daly (c. 1848), Nattali &
Bond (1855); Chatto & Windus (1868), Murray ( 1869), Warne, Methuen (1903); Doctor Syntax is translated
into French (1821), German (1822), Danish (1820). See Harlan W. Hamilton, Doctor Syntax, A Silhouette of
William Combe, Esq. (1742-1823) London, Chatto & Windus, 1969, p. 260.
10
Rowlandson’s picturesque vignettes, which did use a mild sting of satire, elicited a kind of laughter
which was typically deprived of feelings and moral ideas of benevolence – as Reverend Gilpin would
have it – or heartless and vulgar, as John Ruskin would brand it later on. The protagonist of these
comic tours, Doctor Syntax, was a speaking caricature of Reverend Gilpin. Laughter would arise from
the incidents caused by his picturesque theory :
The contemporary reader would immediately think of William Gilpin and his tours […]
The criticism of picturesque theory in the poem is laughable, but it is also informed and
serious. Rowlandson’s prints treat the subject comically, showing the solemn sketcher
tumbling over backwards into a lake […] Combe’s verses reflect the artist’s fun, but they
make a specific point regarding the theories advanced by Gilpin and allude to particular
passages in his books.41
The comic adventures of Doctor Syntax bear evidence to the middle-class popularity of the
picturesque: while we realise that Gilpin is vanishing from the “respectable” scene, we can also assess
the wide cultural reception of his theory – which will become the indispensable baggage for Victorian
tourists, the tool of the Ciceroni, the fashionable tag applied to Lake District souvenirs such as Doctor
Syntax wigs, hats, statuettes, knick-knacks.
I’ll make a TOUR – and then I’ll WRITE IT
You well know what my pen can do,
I’ll prove it with my pensil too: I’ll ride and write and sketch and print,
And then create a real mint;
I’ll prose it here, I’ll verse it there,
And picturesque it ever’ry where.42
Indeed Gilpin had created a real mint, because picturesque theory spread both visually and
verbally, both in high and low culture. Beside colonising the printing trade, it would affect magic
lantern slides and photography and thus mass-visual culture.43 And when in 1809 Gilpin’s picturesque
aesthetics became the object of satire, it generated laughter inasmuch as the reader contemplates the
mechanic endorsement of a theory affecting only the surface of things: unlike the sublime, Gilpin’s
picturesque does not sound the awful depths of emotions and terror; unlike the beautiful, it does not
ask the eye to obey virtue and reason. Thus whenever the picturesque acolyte, the picturesque
traveller, or the picturesque gardener fall into waterfalls, pits, ravines; whenever they admire wild
asses instead of horses, old women instead of plump young girls, or when they happily loiter among
scenes of disgusting dilapidation, the reader laughs, while observing that the stubborn formalism of
41
HAMILTON H., Doctor Syntax, cit., pp. 249-251.
COMBE W., The Tour of Doctor Syntax...), in ANDREWS M., ed., The Picturesque, cit., vol. III, p. 83-100.
43
ANDERSON P., The Printed Image and the Transformations of Popular Culture 1790-1860. Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1991 ; ORESTANO F., “The Revd. William Gilpin and the Picturesque, or, Who's Afraid of
Doctor Syntax?”, Garden History, Journal of the Garden History Society, 31/2, (2003), p. 163-179.
42
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Doctor Syntax lacks all feelings of compassion, of self-preservation, of plain sense, of taste. Ridicule
is the fit punishment for the endorsement of such theories.
If this kind of picturesque elicits laughter because of its formalism, the picturesque theorised by
Price and Knight, subject as it is to psychological associations, stimulates the Romantic sensibility,
producing sadness and tears in the sentimental traveller who contemplates ruins and ravines, natural,
social and urban dilapidation. In the very same years, therefore, we witness this twofold reception of
the two varieties of picturesque theory.
Under the cloud of Romantic sensibility, the picturesque will suggest feelings of mild nostalgia
for a decayed past, of moral compassion, engendered by the ruinous state of the objects it
contemplates: feelings, however, which do not prevent the viewer from enjoying his or her own quota
of visual pleasure. In the end both elements, the formal and the sentimental, laughter and compassion,
inextricable from picturesque taste, will become more evident – perhaps even strident – during the
Victorian age. The Victorian compromise will indeed strive to mediate between ethics and aesthetics:
the viewer grieves for his picturesque object, its pitiable conditions, but poverty, decay, illness are the
price paid to contemplate objects of aesthetic value. The whole work of John Ruskin could be viewed
in the light of this painful compromise, which draws his eye towards picturesque scenes, but at once
suggests acts of charity in order to restore to health his aesthetic object.44
By giving space to these varieties of the picturesque, the nineteenth century will open up spaces
of picturesque eclecticism, which engulf at once laughter and compassion, formal qualities and moral
associations. This eclecticism reconciles aesthetics and taste to the requirements of the market and its
demand for art consumption.
*
I should like to conclude this essay by quoting Gustave Flaubert’s magisterial comment on the
picturesque in Bouvard and Pécuchet – one of the peaks of picturesque comedy when the friends
decide to improve their rural property and find the work of Boitard, L’Architecte desJardins.
L’auteur les divise en une infinité de genres. Il y a, d’abord, le genre mélancolique et
romantique, qui se signale par des immortelles, des ruines, des tombeaux […] On
compose le genre terrible avec des rocs suspendus, des arbres fracassés, des cabanes
incendiées, le genre exotique en plantant des cierges du Pérou […] Le genre grave doit
offrir comme Ermenonville, un temple è la philosophie. Les obélisques et les arcs de
triomphe caractérisent le genre majestueux, de la mousse et des grottes le genre
mistérieux, un lac le genre rêveur. Il y a même le genre fantastique, dont le plus beau
spécimen se voyait dans un jardin wurtembergeois – car on y rencontrait successivement,
44
ORESTANO F., “Across the Picturesque: Ruskin’s Argument with the Strange Sisters”. In Strange Sisters :
Literature and Aesthetics in the Nineteenth Century. Eds. ORESTANO F., FRIGERIO F., New York, London, Peter
Lang, 2009, p. 99-122.
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un sanglier, un ermite, plusieurs sépulcres, et une barque se détachant d’elle-même du
rivage, pour vous conduire dans un boudoir, où les jets d’eau vous inondaient, quand on
se posait sur le sopha..45
These being the items in the picturesque, Bouvard and Pécuchet choose to have the rocks, the
blasted trees, the arch, making a pleasant ruin of the wall, and several monuments in eclectic style :
Ils avaient sacrifié les asperges pour bâtir à la place un tombeau étrusque, c’est à dire un
quadrilatère en plâtre noir, ayant six pieds de hauteur, et l’apparence d’une niche à chien.
Quatre sapinettes aux angles flanquaient ce monument, qui serait surmonté par une urne
et enrichi d’une inscription.
Dans l’autre partie du potager une espèce de Rialto enjambait un bassin, offrant sur ses
bords des coquilles de moules incrustées […] La cahute avait été transformée en cabane
rustique […] Au sommet du vignot six arbres équarris supportaient un chapeau de ferblanc à pointes retroussées, et le tout signifiait une pagode chinoise.[…] Ils abattirent le
plus gros tilleul […] et le couchèrent dans toute la longueur du jardin, de telle sorte qu’on
pouvait le croire apporté par un torrent, ou renversé par la foudre.46
Not happy with this, Pécuchet tries his hand at topiary and cuts several old trees in the shape of
peacocks, pyramids, cubes, cylinders, deer or armchairs. The revelation of their improvements to
neighbours and friends sounds comical and yet dangerously close to contemporary garden decoration,
fair grounds and cemeteries. Its fearless and frightful eclecticism engulfs all feelings, nuances or
allusions :
C’était dans le crépuscule, quelque chose d’effrayant […] le tombeau faisait un cube au
milieu des épinards, le pont vénitien un accent circonflexe pardessus les haricots – et la
cabane, au delà, une grande tache noire ; car ils avaient incendié son toit, pour la rendre
plus poëtique. Les ifs en forme des cerfs et de fauteuils se suivaient, jusqu’à l’arbre
foudroyé […] La pagode chinoise peinte en rouge semblait un phare sur le vignot. […]
Devant l’étonnement de leurs convives, Bouvard et Pécuchet ressentirent une véritable
jouissance.47
Flaubert does not miss one single opportunity to build his comedy. The passage, with its
knowledgeable list of fashionable objects, reads like the extreme consequence of a process which, in
the first decade of the century, had translated the first picturesque idea into the culture of taste, into
technological reproduction, and into the democracy of easy laughter and tears.
45
FLAUBERT G., Bouvard et Pécuchet. Edition critique par Alberto CENTO, Ist. Universitario Orientale, Napoli,
Librairie A.-G. Nizet, Paris, 1964, p. 310-11.
46
Ibidem, p. 310-311.
47
Ibid., p. 315-316.
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