The Politics of the Picturesque

Copely, Stephen, and Peter Garside, eds., The Politics of the Picturesque, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

David Palmer, in his essay on The Picturesque and the Sublime ( chapter 9, p.220) asserts: Ruskin said that probably no word in the language, exclusive of theological expressions, has been the subject of disputes so frequent, or so prolonged as the word 'picturesque'.

The notion that the loose affiliation of ideas concerning landscape, and how a person of taste might best appreciate, or even enhance it, which  emerged during the latter half of the eighteenth century, never amounted to a coherent philosophy or ideology, is central to Copely and Garside's approach. Their introduction sets out succinctly the main areas of consensus and debate.

Scholars in  field of Cultural Studies have broadly questioned  the approach of Hussey (1927) and Walter J Hipple who sought to place a homogeneous Picturesque aesthetic within the broader development of romanticism.

Garside and Copely note in the introductory essay:

'The question that has underlain much recent work [...] has been whether it makes sense in any circumstances to speak of the Picturesque as a single coherent category, or whether the multifarious versions of the Picturesque aesthetic produced by William Gilpin, Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight, by the tourist, the landscape gardener, the painter, the aesthetic theorist, the literary writer, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, let alone  others in wider usages and later periods, are not so disparate and in some respects so in-compatible as to resist homogenisation on any terms.' (p.3)

It is noted that Hussey's broad historical genealogy has been largely accepted by later commentators, however Alan Lui has produced a more nuanced picture differentiating three distinct phases of development. The middle of the eighteenth century was characterised by Picturesque influences in landscape painting and design, the period of 'high Picturesque in design and tousism from the 1770's onwards merging into a period of theorisation regarding the aesthetic lasting from 1790 to around 1810.

Recent work has taken two broad, the not mutually exclusive directions: Commentators such as Andrews (1989), Bermingham (1986) and Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), reflecting the growing interest in eighteenth century cultural history broadly read the Picturesque aesthetic in terms of ideology.

More recently, however, attempts have been made to rehabilitate the Picturesque as a coherent catrgory in aesthetic debate. 'Interestingly, these latter attempts have inverted earlier critical assumptions [...] (and have) celebrated the picturesque as an aesthetic that is in many ways antithetical to Romanticism.' (p. 4).

For example Robinson's Inquiry into the Picturesque (1991) concentrating mainly on the writings of Uvedale Price, and his interest in 'mixture' within design and 'sudden variation', the interest in the relation between design elements rather than the elements themselves, is said to have developed in the Picturesques a strategy for maintining 'vividness' where the viewers' uncertainty about whether they are being misled, entertained or challenged by Picturesque objects is integral to their experience of it.

Michasiw in Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque (1992) seeks to reassert the ideas of Gilpin, too often dismissed as a 'naive tourist' in relation to the more 'serious' wtitings of landscape designers such as Price and Knight. 'For Michasiw, Gilpin's Enlightenment game with the artifices of perception and representation, his self aware ironic playfulness, are the antithesis of Romantic mystificatory absolutism, even if the layer theorists of the Picturesque themselves fall prey to that absolutism.' (p.5)

The essays develop current thinking about the picturesque in three broad areas.

The first four essays develop thinking regarding cultural practice of the Picturesque in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Watkin and Daniels examines how practical estate management practices as well as decorative considerations affected Price and Kent's development at Foxley. Charlesworth  considers the motif of the ruined abbey in picturesque landscape, particularly in Rivaulx. Stephen Copley investigates the ambiguous position of industrial sites within picturesque tourism through a consideration of Gilpin's treatment of the Borrowdale black lead mine.

The next group of essays have literary texts as their sources. Vivien Jones explores the gender politics of the Picturesque through a consideration of the use of Picturesque motifs in fiction written by women in the period. Ann Bermingham draws a parallel between fashion and the Picturesque in her contribution The Picturesque and Ready To Wear Femininity. 'Peter Garside's discussion of the relation between Scott's decscription of Meg Merrilies and contemporary illustrations of her (...) draws on eighteenth century debates on the social place og gypsies as well as aesthetic assessments of their potential as Picturesque figures.

The remainder of the essays in the book concern later debates concerning the Picturesque ranging from James Whales consideration of the Picturesque as an organising trope for writings about Africa in the work of James Bruce and Mungo Park. David Worrall surveys the attacks on the Picturesque in the later nineteenth century by proponents of the Spencean programme of land use. Anne Janowitz analyses now the language of Welsh artisan radicals associated with the Chartist movement was rooted in the Picturesque. Finally, Malcom Andrews marks the continuance of the debate in his survey of late nineteenth century controversies over the social and political aceptibility or unacceptability of the aesthetic, as it is manifested in photographic images of the decay and decrepitude in the poorer areas of London (p.10).

Key Quote:

There is no doubt that Price felt a conflict between the discourses of farming and of the aesthetics of evaluating landscape [...] in his Essay on the Picturesque Price takes issue with Gilpin by celebrating landscapes that, if not luxuriantly fertile, are flourishing, populous, domesticated, and ned to be worked industriously to kep them so.
Daniels and Watkins, Picturesque landscaping and estate management, p. 19.