'Playing the Picturesque' 3

A walk from the Playing the Picturesqueexhibition at the Edge Gallery University of Bath to City centre viewpoints. We develop a response to the exhibition and play with the picturesque as we pass the constructed and the accidental. The walk involves and finishes at picturesque viewpoints looking back at the locations on our walks. This planned route passes through Prior Park Gardens which is a National Trust site, cards or purses at the ready!

NB: PARTS OF THE ROUTE THROUGH PRIOR PARK GARDENS MAY BE CLOSED DUE TO RESTORATION WORK. PLEASE CHECK WITH NATIONAL TRUST PRIOR PARK BEFORE LEAVING

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/prior-park-landscape-garden

Call NT Prior Park 01225 833977 to check

Back in the 1700’s the sons and even some of the daughters of wealthy British families set off on ‘Grand Tours’ of Europe and beyond, much as their modern counterparts take their ‘Year Off’ in more distant part of the world. They saw the ruins of the classical empires and walked through mountains and forests. Others travelled to the lands colonised by the European powers and saw even more awe inspiring sights. Informed by these experiences new aesthetics were developing. Resonating with earlier landscape/prospect paintings of Poussin, Lorraine and Rosa, those returning from the Grand Tour described the views they had seen as ‘picturesque’ wanting to capture them in images and recreate them. Old family estates often had a ruined castle or monastery on their land, ‘picturesque’ views, walks and rides were constructed. For many the new slave-generated wealth and spoils of empire funded this landscaping including the construction of follies, temples and castles and the destruction and removal of whole villages. Privileged visitors were invited to visit and view.

With the closure of parts of Europe due to plague, war and revolution, the Grand Tour was disrupted. Picturesque hunters stayed at home. The wealthy visited each other’s ‘improved’ estates. and viewed each others collections.The less wealthy visited the gardens. Picturesque hunters were recommended to explore the River Wye and the Lake District. Some came equipped with a Claude Lens, a handheld darkened glass mirror in which they looked to see an enhanced and ‘picturesque ‘image. The device showed a reflected image not so very different from a mobile phone Gap Year selfie. In those days the picturesque was more arduous to capture, today all you need is the Instagram filter X-Pro 11!

By the mid 1800s picturesque hunting was ceasing to be fashionable, satirised by Jane Austen and William Coombe, but ‘picturesque’ had entered the aesthetic vocabulary. It was used to describe the enslaved people working in Jamaican sugar plantations and harnessed towards white nationalist views of Britain. Today it implies framing and selection, raising questions of privilege and gaze.