The garden and the topographical view

• Autores: Morris R. Brownell
• Localización: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscape, ISSN 1460-1176, Vol. 1, Nº 3, 1981, págs. 271-278
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Topographical art is the poor relation of English landscape painting. Although art historians have rid themselves of the academic dogma which ranked landscape beneath history painting and portraiture, they continue to regard topography as prose in the poetry of landscape. (A recent exhibition of English landscape painting hung pictures in separate bays, one reserved for topographical, the other for 'poetic' landscapes. Prejudice is not the only reason for neglect of English topographical art. Many of the paintings in this tradition remain inaccessible and uncatalogued in private collections. Many of its artists are anonymous or the result of mistaken attributions, and the known topographical painters have been little studied since M. H. Grant. Topographical drawings are more often found by accident than by design. The massive engraved topographical record is largely unindexed outside London. The bibliography of illustrated scenery is hardly known outside the Abbey collection. Important topographical views in extra-illustrated volumes are uncatalogued, and valuable topographical vignettes in printed books are unknown to the architectural historian. In short, we have no adequate indexes and few catalogues of English topographical art; we cannot produce without enormous effort a reasonably complete iconography of such important buildings as Hampton Court, Buckingham House, Westminster Bridge, or country houses of the significance of Wilton or Chatsworth.