Synopses & Reviews
Uvedale Price achieved most fame as the author of the influential Essay on the Picturesque of 1794 in which he argued that the work of the greatest landscape artists, such as Salvator Rosa, Rubens and Claude, should be used as models for the improvement of real landscape. His attack on the smooth certainties of Capability Brown sparked off a public controversy, drawing in Richard Payne Knight and Humphrey Repton, which became a cause celebre. This is the first biography of Uvedale Price, bringing out his contradictory and elusive character and revealing an astonishing cast of friends and acquaintances, including Gainsborough, Voltaire, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The book shows how he developed his ideas through practical experimentation on his own land and buildings and provides an understanding of the context of Price's practices and theories and the key interconnections between his roles as landowner, art collector, forester, landscaper, connoisseur and scholar. Charles Watkins is Professor of Rural Geography, University of Nottingham; Ben Cowell is Assistant Director, External Affairs, National Trust
Synopsis
Picturesque ideas suffused English aesthetics during the Georgian period and beyond, to such an extent that the picturesque became the principal way of seeing, understanding and appreciating landscape well into the twentieth century. Picturesque modes of art and design were taken up enthusiastically by followers as diverse as Sir Walter Scott, John Claudius Loudon, the pioneers of the Garden City movement and the town planners of the post-war era. According to Nikolaus Pevsner, Uvedale Price (1747-1829) was "the most brilliant of the theorists of the English Picturesque". Yet until now Price has remained an elusive figure, despite the wide-ranging controversy that his Essay on the Picturesque (1794) produced on its publication.
This is the first full-scale biography of Uvedale Price, bringing out his contradictory and elusive character and revealing an astonishing cast of friends and acquaintances, including Gainsborough, Voltaire, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It demonstrates how Price's theories, which were to excite polite Georgian society, were grounded both in his personal experience of managing his estate, Foxley, in Herefordshire, and his wide ranging interests in art and ancient and modern literature. It explores the interconnections between Price's different roles: as landowner, landscape designer, art collector, forester, connoisseur, scholar, and correspondent with many of the leading personalities of his day. And in so doing it restores Price's reputation as one of the founders of the English landscaping tradition, alongside contemporaries such as Humphry Repton and Richard Payne Knight.
Charles Watkins is Professor of Rural Geography, University of Nottingham; Ben Cowell is Assistant Director, External Affairs, National Trust.
Synopsis
The first biography of the 18th-century landscape gardener, Uvedale Price, showing the key interconnections between his roles as landowner, art collector, forester, landscaper, connoisseur and scholar.
Uvedale Price achieved most fame as the author of the influential Essay on the Picturesque of 1794 in which he argued that the work of the greatest landscape artists, such as Salvator Rosa, Rubens and Claude, should be usedas models for the improvement of real landscape. His attack on the smooth certainties of Capability Brown sparked off a public controversy, drawing in Richard Payne Knight and Humphry Repton, which became a cause c l bre.
This is the first biography of Uvedale Price, bringing out his contradictory and elusive character and revealing an astonishing cast of friends and acquaintances, including Gainsborough, Voltaire, William Wordsworth and ElizabethBarrett Browning. The book shows how he developed his ideas through practical experimentation on his own land and buildings and provides an understanding of the context of Price's practices and theories and the key interconnections between his roles as landowner, art collector, forester, landscaper, connoisseur and scholar.
CHARLES WATKINS is Professor of Rural Geography, University of Nottingham; BEN COWELL is Assistant Director, External Affairs, National Trust.