Language and Landscape in the Eighteenth Cenentury

Five historians discuss five key words that shaped the eighteenth century garden: Taste, Wilderness, Park, Pleasure and Picturesque.

Taste by Dr Laura Mayer, Wilderness by Dr James Bartos, Park by Prof Tom Williamson, Pleasure by Dr Kate Felus and Picturesque by Michael Liversidge

Moderator: Prof Timothy Mowl, who will chair the Q&A

Dr Laura Mayer has written books on Capability Brown and Humphry Repton published by Shire Publications, and she is co-author of The Historic Gardens of England: Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. Her PhD thesis focussed on taste and patronage in the eighteenth century.

Dr James Bartos recently completed his PhD thesis on wildernesses and groves in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He is on the Council of the Garden History Society and Chairman of Dorset Gardens Trust.

Professor Tom Williamson leads the study of landscape in the School of History at the University of East Anglia and is actively involved in the study of designed landscapes, especially parks and gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Amongst numerous publications, he has written Polite Landscapes, about the eighteenth-century landscape park.

Dr Kate Felus is the principal of Historic Landscapes, an interdisciplinary consultancy which specialises in the research and management of historic parks and gardens of all periods. She has published articles and contributed chapters to a number of publications on both the eighteenth-century landscape and garden conservation. Her PhD thesis investigated the social uses of Georgian gardens and their garden buildings.

Michael Liversidge is Emeritus Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bristol and a member of the History of Art Department which he joined in 1970. His specialist interests are mainly in British art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on which he has published numerous articles and has co-curated major exhibitions, including on Canaletto and on British artists and Rome. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society of Arts.

Professor Timothy Mowl is Emeritus Professor of the History of Architecture and Designed Landscapes at Bristol University and Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham. He has published extensively on the history of architecture, taste and design, including a series of studies of the historic landscapes and gardens of the counties of England and revisionist biographies of William Kent, William Beckford and Horace Walpole.

Programme:

5.00pm Doors open

5.30pm Welcome

5.35pm Speakers’ presentations

7.40pm Panel Q&A chaired by Prof Timothy Mowl

8.00pm Drinks reception and opportunity to view the Garden Museum’s new acquisition

This event celebrates the acquisition by the Garden Museum of an eighteenth-century painting of the landscape garden at Painshill.