Page 18 - Studio International - October1973

stint or number'12. Kent's approach was more
conceptual, for by selecting what should be
seen, and presenting it as a picture, a constantly
changing seties of compositions of the
landscape emerge as the garden is walked round.
Kent had studied as a painter in Italy, and had
bought paintings for English collections, during
the second decade of the century. He also had a
collection of his own, including some
seventeenth-century landscape painting, and it is
likely that such painting, especially by Claude
and Gaspar who use side screens of foliage to
frame a landscape and architecture to catch the
eye, may have influenced him. The design at
t. View from bowling green, showing Horse and
Rousham invites the spectator to participate Lion group, Heyford Bridge, Temple of the
in the structure of the garden by walking into it Mill, and eyecatcher
and around it, and looking out of it, rather than
viewing it partially or completely from a high
terrace or from the end of radiating avenues.
Thus a series of artfully constructed views
introduce a very formal and painterly way of
examining landscape, as a canvas, even as a
theatrical set, in terms of subtle gradations, tones
and distancing. Kent was presenting what he
wanted seen. That this conformed to what was
later to become, with the picturesque school, a
formula subject to minute definition, does not
detract from the beauty of Kent's presented
landscape, changing both in space and time,
that is, as the spectator walks through the
garden, and as the seasons change. 2. View from above Praeneste, showing Dying
Judging from a map of the grounds (dated Gladiator
about 173813), and the construction of the walks,
the spectator is invited to follow a carefully
prepared circuit. Such circuits were not
uncommon: there is a right and a wrong way
round Stourhead, for example, and according
to Robert Dodsley's description, and
subsequent guides, Shenstone carefully
planned the way round The Leasowes14.
Thus Kent's conceptual plan imposes itself, and
can unfold surprises in a controlled way.
I then fell into a lake outside the garden,
The circuit starts from the house, and the
garden is approached across the bowling green.
Framed by two seats at the end of the green and
by planting on either side, the eye moves due
north across the Cherwell, catching first a 3. View across paddock from ha-ha, towards
castellated seat, gateway and two urns
glimpse of the garden as it winds back into view
following the bend of the river upstream, then
of the mediaeval Heyford Bridge, built up above
the surrounding fields, and extending across
the middle distance in the manner of a Claude
painting (for example, Landscape with Father of
Psyche sacrificing to Apollo). Judging from his
drawing of this view (see note 7), Kent
deliberately made full use of this existing
picturesque feature. Deep in the landscape is
a small cottage given a temple front and a new
name, The Temple of the Mill, by Kent, and
originally flanked by a screen of trees on either
side, and an eyecatcher on the summit of the hill
beyond, also by Kent and echoing the front of 4. View from castellated seat of Dying Gladiator
the cottage with its three arches, but
suggesting as well the façade of a church or
abbey. In between, the flat valley of the Cherwell
rises gently behind the Temple of the Mill,
although the hills are more densely wooded
now, and the eyecatcher would have originally
stood in sharper relief on the skyline. In
placing objects thus in landscape (in fact, in land
here that did not belong to the estate), Kent was
drawing the eye out into landscape in much
the same way in which a classical painter would,
what Walpole called 'the selection of favourite
objects and the veiling of deformities by screens
of plantations, sometimes allowing modest
waste to add its foil to the richest theatre', a
compositional device of 'the great masters'15.
Such a composition seems to have much in
common with a Claude painting, especially in
the way in which sidescreens of foliage and
buildings are used to draw the eye out in a
zigzag to the horizon. In placing his buildings
in the landscape, Kent was thus drawing
attention to the countryside as part of his own
created garden, the two to be compared.
Between the two seats at the end of the
bowling green, and acting as a focus point
within the garden itself, is a Scheemaker
group, Horse devoured by Lion, a copy of a group
that used to stand in the south-east corner of the
Villa d'Este16 at Tivoli, part of the small
theatrical set of ancient Rome created there on a
steep terrace looking over the flat landscape
that sweeps away from Tivoli to Rome.
Apparently this group symbolized the struggle
between Tivoli (the horse) and Rome (the lion),
and the domination of the latter. The group
stood to one side of a statue of Rome; on the
other side was a group of the wolf suckling the
infants Romulus and Remus17. Nearby a
cascade and statue of a river God holding a
model of the famous Temple of the Sibyl
suggest the waterfall at Tivoli, much admired by
both 17th- and t8th-century landscape painters
as a 'sacred landscape'18. The waters of Tivoli
thus symbolically portrayed flow to meet 'the
Tiber' represented by a god almost completely
immersed in falling water. The joined waters
intended to simulate the sea19. The Villa
d'Este was famous for the way in which
surrounding countryside was incorporated into
the garden views, and the Horse and Lion group
was situated at a point where those views were
the most dramatic. In fact, F. S. Seni quotes
from a letter of 1569 describing what was
accomplished at that time which points out that
the statues were 'well arranged for decoration of
the site and for the pleasant view'20. It is almost
inconceivable that Kent did not visit the Villa
d'Este during his time in Rome so that here, as
more obviously he did elsewhere (for example,
the Praeneste, see below), Kent was drawing
attention to a classical reference that an
educated and well-travelled man would
recognize, and thus be able to make
comparisons between the Roman campagna and
the Oxfordshire countryside. Such an
associative approach to landscape became even
more important later in the century.
The circuit proceeds east, along the side of
the paddock, but protected from the open
countryside by deep woods along the terrace