Page 19 - Studio International - October1973

winding in a stone channel through grass
2 edge. The next view across the Cherwell uses
Scheemaker's copy of The Dying Gladiator as a
location point in the garden itself. This time,
the eye passes over a balustraded terrace edge
bordered by two termes into a different view of
countryside, to the north-east rather than to the
north. The walk to The Dying Gladiator is
protected from the paddock by a ha-ha so
called, Walpole says, by 'the common people' to
`express their surprise at finding a sudden and
unperceived check to their walks''='. The ha-ha
had the advantage of protecting the area of the
garden without introducing a visible barrier,
like a fence or hedge. Thus the views across the
paddock show a castellated seat, a gateway and
two urns on the far side as if they are part of the
3 field itself, while in fact the ha-ha bends round
to enclose them in the garden. Including such
`garden furniture' in farm land was to suggest a
new style of gardening, referred to as Terme
ornée'22, a juxtaposition of farm and garden
popular with those who had little money or land.
In this case, the Rousham estate was too small to
give over valuable grazing land to the garden
area, and development was restricted to the less
useful terraced area beside the Cherwell, and
where the ground tapered narrowly in the north.
But by using the ha-ha the paddock is pulled
into the garden. From the castellated seat are
also pleasant views to the Dying Gladiator and
4 the landscape beyond, and to the house, the 6. Venus's Vale: view from above top cascade
outline of which has now been spoiled because
Kent's additions to the north front were hidden
s in 1877 by mock-Elizabethan additions.
From here (according to the map of 1738)23
the new grass walk could be taken to
Townesend's building, or Venus's Vale24
entered from its highest points. The Vale slopes
gently down to the river but is subtly arranged
in grass terraces that present different
elevations of the surrounding countryside from
each point. Again the views are more easterly
and present much flatter, less wooded
countryside. There is a similarity too
between the Vale and a naturalistic Italian
terraced garden like the Villa Aldobrandini25
7. Venus's Vale: view from below top cascade over
at Frascati, where the water falls down through
a steeper vale, decorated with rustic waterfalls
and cascades, bound in by woods on either
side, and showing a view over the Villa of the
Roman campagna beneath Frascati. Judging
again from the 1738 map, and from stumps of
trees still left in the ground, Venus's Vale showed
the Oxfordshire countryside through an open
grove, a favourite device of Kent's and much
admired by Walpole, who wrote how 'loose
groves crowned an easy eminence with happy
ornament, and while they called in the distant
view between their graceful stems, removed
and extended the perspective by delusive
comparisons'. 26
Townesend's building27 can now be 8. Venus's Vale : view from above lower cascade
approached down the Elm Walk or more
likely (since it is possible that a straight
avenue in such a Kent garden would be for
looking down only) along the serpentine rill,
described by Walpole as 'a slender stream
Walks in wood'28.
The rill is intriguing for several reasons : first
because it indicates that the irregular walks in
woods permitted in formal and partly formal
designs around 1720 29 did exist and had become
an established tradition in the 173os ; second, it
is an early example of the much-famed
serpentine line in water, later popularized by
Hogarth, and that had made an early appearance
around 173o in Hyde Park, the work of
Charles Bridgeman; and third, it is a pretty
conceit, for the small artificial rill mimics the
grander and natural twisting of the Cherwell
5. View from castellated seat of house
just beyond the Elm Walk.
From Townesend's building, there are
views of another different section of
surrounding landscape, previously 'called in'
between the 'stems' of a clump of elms, now
9 almost completely obscured by low bushes.
However, the climax is the last of the
landscape views, that from a statue of Apollo,
o sometimes called the Colossal Figure, at the
end of the Elm Walk. In this last controlled
view of the countryside the spectator faces due
north as he had done from the end of the
bowling green at the beginning of the circuit.
Heyford Bridge, Temple of the Mill and
eyecatcher are all visible for the second and
last time, although differently aligned: the
eyecatcher is to the left of the cottage instead
of to the right, and Heyford Bridge stretches
across the full length of the foreground, the
arches over the Cherwell clearly visible on the
left, and the rest originally seen through the
`stems' of the elms, now obscured by bushes.
At Rousham Kent presented a series of
carefully arranged landscape views over a
narrow range of the compass (north to north-
east), the first and last of which are carefully
defined by eyecatchers, but with intermittent
views of undefined landscape, in which,
perhaps, the spectator is invited to discover his
own structure. A comparison can be made with
the placing of Hawksmoor's Mausoleum at
Castle Howard which, visible for miles around
and from all points of the compass, provides a
Octagon Pond
focus point within the soft undulations of the
Yorkshire countryside. Kent, a Yorkshireman,
almost certainly knew the Mausoleum and its
setting, and it has been suggested he thought of
it when designing and placing the Temple of
Ancient Virtue in the Elysian Fields at Stowe.
Rousham's landscape is, however, more
deliberately presented: the sequence the
spectator has to follow, and the care with which
Kent conceals, and reveals, the countryside,
not in the least the different perspectives he
presents of the same landscape, suggest an
approach to the problem of making nature into
a garden that is probably unique. The final
view of the eyecatchers is a conceit that would
not have been lost on a contemporary
spectator: the same landscape and structure,
but a constantly moving picture that demands
the participation and associative sensibility of
the spectator.
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