The landscape park: Economics, art and ideology

• Autores: Tom Williamson
• Localización: Studies in the history of gardens and designed landscape, ISSN 1460-1176, Vol. 13, Nº 1-2, 1993, págs. 49-55
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Landscape parks in England are usually studied as "works of art", their appearance and structure interpreted and explained in terms of the aesthetic and philosophical texts produced by a small group of contemporary intellectuals. The landscape park, that is, is considered primarily as an aesthetic artefact, and the evidence for its elucidation collected accordingly: evidence which, we should not be surprised to learn, confirms its artistic status. Such a simple approach to the eighteenth-century park was not, however, necessarily shared by contemporaries. The members of the aristocracy and gentry who lived in and paid for these landscapes had more complex interests and needs. When they altered, amended or simply ignored the suggestions of Brown, Woods or Richmond (as they generally did), or as they formulated their own ideas of parkland design, they were creating landscapes with a wide range of functions; landscapes which were far more than the setting for a country house, or a pretty prospect to be viewed from its windows. Parks were homes, farms and forestry enterprises as well as being pictures. Moreover, these diverse activities were not simply fitted round or hidden away from the dominant aesthetic. They lay at the very heart of the landscape park.