The Artist and The Garden Every Thursday 27 th September to 25 th October Drinks Reception, Lecture and Discussion

Transcription

1 The Artist and The Garden Every Thursday 27 th September to 25 th October Drinks Reception, Lecture and Discussion In British art, the garden assumed a visual presence in the 1600s through portraits of estate owners, often taking the form of a background, real or imagined, while by the eighteenth century it was established in its own right, often in the form of estates which had undergone extensive - and expensive - emparkment. Here, too, the artist played a crucial role. Houses, too, were portrayed in the context of gardens and the wider landscape, as emblems of their owner s taste and sophistication. By the nineteenth century there was an increasing recognition on the part of the artist that more humble gardens were deserving of attention, as interest grew in the depiction of cottage gardens, vegetable plots, and urban garden spaces. The vantage point of the artist changed too. While earlier artists had focussed upon the wider garden landscape, or prospect, artists began to take a greater interest in the local and particular, often capturing the view from their own studio into their own gardens. Artists, too, took an active role in the cultivation and arrangements of plants, not just as specimens, but also as aesthetic statements and reflections of their own creative impulse. Over the course of five weeks the speakers will discuss the work of a whole range artists - historic, modern and contemporary - who have shaped our view of the garden. The gardens themselves range across the British Isles from Scotland to the South coast, from those which are preserved only through visual records left by the artist, to green spaces that even now continue to challenge our perception and expectation of what a garden should or could be. No prior art historical knowledge is necessary. About the readings You may want to learn more about each week s topics either before or after attending lectures each week. Listed below each lecture are resources you may want to look at in relation the specific topic covered during that week, but we ve also provided a brief list of general reading that you may find interesting or helpful in providing further context to the overall themes of the course. Where possible, the Paul Mellon Centre will provide access to selections of the readings online. These can be accessed only by those who have enrolled onto one or more lecture. Further information on how to access the readings will be provided in due course. If you prefer to access hardcopy versions of the below readings, participants on the Public Lecture Course are encouraged to register as users of the Paul Mellon Centre Public Study Room in order to access our Library Collection. General Nicholas Alfrey, Stephen Daniels and Martin Postle (eds.), Art of the Garden: The Garden in British Art, Present Day. Tate Publishing, London, Roy Strong. The Artist and the Garden. Yale, 2000

2 27 September Introduction: The Artist and the Garden Christopher Woodward This introductory talk explores the relationship between making art, and making gardens, and celebrates the particularly British tradition of the artist-gardener, as embodied by figures from Humphry Repton and Gertrude Jekyll to Cedric Morris and Derek Jarman. We will also look at the influence on paintings on garden design from the 18 th -century to the 20 th -century master, Russell Page. And why do so many artists such as Jekyll and Page turn to landscape design? And, we ask, is a garden a work of art or something much more important than that? Ann Duma et al. Painting The Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse. Royal Academy, London, 2015 Andrew Lambirth. Cedric Morris. Garden Museum, London, October The Art of Landscape Gardening Stephen Daniels Humphry Repton ( ) coined the term landscape gardening and described his practise as an art. In this, his bicententary year, this lecture explores what sort of art Repton s landscape gardening was, how it related to other graphic and literary arts of the time, particularly in his famous Red Books and published works, and how it has shaped landscape design in the past two centuries. Readings: Stephen Daniels, Humphry Repton, Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England. Yale University Press, London, Dorothy Stroud, Humphry Repton. Country Life, George Carter, Patrick Goode, Kedrun Laurie, Humphry Repton, Landscape Gardener, exhibition catalogue. Sainsbury Centre, UEA, Andre Rogger, Landscapes of Taste: The Art of Humphry Repton s Red Books (Rutledge, 2007) J.C. Loudon ed The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton. Longman, 1840; reprinted Gregg International, October 'Country Gardens Martin Postle The talk explores the role of the artist in visualising the country garden from the later 19 th century to the present day. The focus is upon modest rural plots; cottage gardens and allotments, notably those owned by artist gardeners. Among the artists to be discussed are Alfred Parsons, Cedric Morris, John Nash, Stanley Spencer, Ivon Hitchens, Patrick Heron and Derek Jarman.

3 Martin Postle, Happy England : The Artist and the Garden from Allingham to Spencer, in Steven Parissien ed., Stanley Spencer and the English Garden. Compton Verney in association with Paul Holerton publishing, 2011, pp Derek Jarman, Derek Jarman s Garden. Thames & Hudson, October Land Art and the garden Nicholas Alfrey and Joy Sleeman This lecture looks at the radical new landscape art of the later 1960s and early 1970s, now more generally known as Land art, in relation to the garden. Artists had begun to make work directly in the landscape, by-passing the studio and re-thinking the conventions of exhibition, but there was no consensus about attitudes to the garden as a potential location. Whereas the influential American artists Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt were interested in the tradition of landscape gardening in Britain, visiting significant sites here in 1969, their British counterparts were more likely to resist the ideas of tradition, property and enclosure. Some artists saw the potential of the vernacular garden as an outdoor space in which to make challenging new work, while on the other hand, Ian Hamilton Finlay began to establish a remarkable neoclassical garden at Stonypath in the bleak Pentland Hills near Edinburgh, conceived both as a setting for works of art and as a work of art in its own right. Nicholas Alfrey and Joy Sleeman, Framing the outdoors: landscape and Land art in Britain, , Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 29, no. 1-2 (2009), pages John Dixon Hunt, Nature Over Again: The Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Reaktion Books, London, Joy Sleeman, Elegiac inscriptions: a discussion of words in the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay and Richard Long, in Joseph Black, The Garden at War: Deception, Craft and Reason at Stowe, Paul Holberton, London, 2017, pages , notes on pages Ben Tufnell, Land Art, Tate Publishing, London, ( Introduction: The New Landscape Art, pages 6-19, notes on page 136). 25 October The Three Perfections: Eileen Hogan and Urban Space Todd Longstaffe-Gowan Todd will attempt to map out some of Hogan s intellectual points of reference, formal preoccupations, and thematic choices, particularly with regards to the urban landscape as represented in her paintings. Eileen Hogan, Four Squares (London: The Fine Art Society, 2006)

4 Eileen Hogan, Sweet Promise (London: Fleming-Wyfold Foundation, 2013) Eileen Hogan, Edges and Enclosures (London: Browse & Darby, 2015) About the speakers Christopher Woodward is Director of the Garden Museum and was previously Director of the Holburne Museum of Art, Bath, and a Curator at Sir John Soane s Museum. He has recently led an 8 million reconstruction and extension of The Garden Museum, which includes the display of a collection of garden art and is the setting for exhibitions including (in 2018) Cedric Morris and Humphry Repton, curated by Stephen Daniels and opening on 23 rd October. Stephen Daniels is Emeritus Professor of Cultural Geography at the University of Nottingham and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author and co-author of a series of works on the landscape arts, including Humphry Repton, Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England (Yale University Press, 1999) and the exhibition catalogues Art of the Garden (Tate, 2004) and Paul Sandby, Picturing Britain (Royal Academy, 2009). Martin Postle is Deputy Director for Grants and Publications at the Paul Mellon Centre. He joined the Centre in 2007, and was previously Head of British Art to 1900 at Tate. Martin's research interests focus on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Art, including portraiture, landscape and the history of art academies. Among the exhibitions he has curated are Art of the Garden. The Garden in British Art, 1800 to the Present Day (Tate Britain, Belfast and Manchester 2004); Joshua Reynolds.The Creation of Celebrity (Tate Britain and Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara 2005), Stanley Spencer and the English Garden (Compton Verney, 2011), Johan Zoffany, RA. Society Observed (Yale Center for British Art and the Royal Academy of Arts, London ), and Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting (Yale Center for British Art and the National Museum Wales, Cardiff, 2014). Joy Sleeman is Head of Taught Courses in History and Theory of Art at UCL Slade School of Fine Art. Her research is focused on the histories of sculpture and landscape, especially 1960s and 70s Land art. She co-curated, with Nicholas Alfrey and Ben Tufnell, the exhibition Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain , for the Arts Council Collection and Hayward Touring ( ). She was selector for the 2 nd edition of Jerwood Open Forest for the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and Forestry Commission England. Since 2000 she has been a member of the editorial board of the Sculpture Journal, the leading academic journal for research in sculpture. Nicholas Alfrey is Honorary Research Associate in History of Art at the University of Nottingham. His research interests are in Romantic art and its legacies, particularly in landscape. He was co-curator, with Stephen Daniels and Martin Postle, of Art of the Garden, an exhibition at Tate Britain to mark the bicentenary of the establishment of the Royal Horticultural Society in Other exhibitions he has co-curated include Uncommon Ground: Land art in Britain , with Joy Sleeman and Ben Tufnell ( ), and with Rebecca Partridge, Scaling the Sublime: Art at the Limits of Landscape, Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, 2018.

5 Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect, historian, author and collector with an international design practice based in London. He is Gardens Adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, Landscape Adviser to the Crown Estate Paving Commission in Regent s Park, and founding member and President of the London Parks and Gardens Trust.