On-Line Philosophy Resources

from the Institute of Environment Philosophy and Public Policy

Bibliography on the Picturesque

Primary Sources

William Gilpin (1724-1804)

a schoolmaster and travel writer who was the first to attempt a systematic theoretical treatment of the picturesque as it arose from his travel writing and illustrating. The main texts of philosophical interest are:
Gilpin, William 1786 Observations Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, Made in the Year 1772 on Several Parts of England.
Gilpin, William 1792 Three Essay’s: On Picturesque Beauty, On Picturesque Travel, On Sketching Landscape
His travel books with his own illustrations cover such areas as The Wye valley and South Wales (1782); The Lake District (1786); The Scottish Highlands (1789); the New Forest (1791); The West Country and the Isle of Wight (1789); he Coasts of Hampshire, Sussex and Kent (1804); Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and North Wales (1809).
1782

Uvedale Price (1747-1829)

Price, Uvedale 1794 Essay on the Picturesque expanded eds. in 1796-8 and 1801.
Price, Uvedale 1801 A Dialogue on the Distinct Characters of the Picturesque and the Beautiful

Richard Payne Knight

Knight, Richard Payne 1794 The Landscape: A didactic poem
Knight, Richard Payne 1805 An Analytic Enquiry into the Principles of Taste
Repton, Humphrey 1816 Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening Including some Remarks on Grecian Gothic Architecture.

Repton, Humphrey Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening. This is reproduced in Louden, J.A. (1840)
Louden, J. A. 1840 The Landscape gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphrey Repton Esq. Being His Entire Works on these subjects
Chambers, William 1772 Dissertation on Oriental Gardening
After minimal travels in China Chambers returned to England and took up the post of gardener to the Princess of Wales at Kew and drawing master to the future George III. He, seemingly for novelty’s sake, developed an idea of the Chinese garden that gave it three qualities: the pleasing, the terrible and the surprising. These principles work their way into the picturesque (Price is seen by Hussey p. 160 as taking his ‘emotional’ view) though Chambers’ garden designs were not widely admired and prompted something closer to sideshows than a new aesthetic taste. His ideas were taken up on the continent though.
Mason, William 1772 The English Garden
Ruskin, John 1856 ‘Of the Turnerian Picturesque’ Modern Painters Vol iv, Part v, ch 1
Ruskin draws a distinction between “the low school of the surface-picturesque”, characterised as the immorality of one who looks in a detached way upon rural hardship as a quaint scene, and the more conscience driven “high picturesque” that records the reality of that hardship.

Secondary Sources

Arnold, Malcolm ed. The Picturesque: Literary sources and documents (Helm Information Ltd: East Sussex, 1994).
Volume I The idea of the picturesque and the vogue for scenic tourism
Volume II Debating the theory and practice of the picturesque
Vol. III The picturesquein the 19th century
a really useful resource, good introduction by Arnold and extracts with many lesser known figures specially in Vol. 1.

Hussey, Christopher 1927 The Picturesque (London: Frank cass and Co., 1983 3rd ed.)
Howard, P. Landscapes and the Artist’s Vision (London: Routledge, 1991) Chapter 4 very useful
Ross, Stephanie What Gardens Mean
Andrews, Malcolm The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800 (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1989).
Hunt, John Dixon Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the history of landscape architecture (Cambridge, Mass.:M.I.T. Press, 1992).
Robinson, S. Inquiry into the Picturesque (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1991).
Copley, Stephen and Garside, Peter The Politics of the Picturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Hipple, Walter The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957).
Michasiw, Kim J. ‘Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque’ Representations 38 (1992) 76-100.
Budge, Gavin, editor Aesthetics and the Picturesque, 1795-1840. (Thoemmes Press 6 Volumes 2001).

Critiques

Marshall, William (1795) Reviews of Landscape and Essay on the Picturesque
Attacks the P. on the basis of unreality and denial of social relations – political reasons for the attack re. the proper use and control of land. See Robinson, S. 1991

Satirical treatments

Jane Austin Pride and Predjudice and Northhanger Abbey
Combe, William Tour of Doctor Syntax in Search of the Picturesque

Back to picturesque index page