L. Capability Brown landscape gardens

Known as the Father of British Landscape Architecture, Lancelot Cap­ab­ility Brown (1716-83) started life as an estate worker's son. The Northum­b­erland lad trained as a gardener's boy at the local country house, Kirkharle Hall. By 1741 he had reached Stowe, a Bucking­hamshire estate where he became responsible for one of the loveliest landscape gardens in England. He stayed at Stowe for ten years and got married in the local church.

Croome sits in Brown's landscape.

Note the architectural reflections in the lake

Claude and Poussin’s view of the Roman Campagna inspired naturalistic garden design and Brown refused to create formal, symmetrical French Baroque gardens. Instead he designed naturalistic, picturesque spaces with undulating grasses, tree clumps, curving lakes and flowing rivers. He wanted to create landscapes like those the C18th Grand Tourists saw in Italy.

Naturalistic did not mean untouched. Capability Brown surveyed the land he had available to him and considered how to transform the English landscape with his designs. He did whatever needed to be done: moved entire hills, created vast lakes and managed distant views. Because wide open expanses, views and vistas were so important, landowners had to cooperate with Brown. Brown asked the landowners to redesign their houses so that the views could be better seen from the front rooms & they have agreed immediately

And the landowners would have paid! By the 1760s Brown was earning a fortune, usually £500 for one commission! As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, arriving on horseback to survey an estate and prepare the plan in detail. Where he did not even have time to visit, Brown created a design on paper and let a subcontractor get on with the job.

His 170 surviving landscapes include the World Heritage Sites at Blen­heim Palace, Highclere Castle aka Downton Abbey, Alnwick, Chatsworth, Syon Byk and Compton Verney. In these places and others, Capability Brown set the standard for contemporary and future landscape designers, and probably landscape artists as well; he created the landscape style that I think of as typically English.

Bowood House, 1880, 

Wiki

Brown laid out the western lawns and removed the early C18th formal gardens. Lawns and trees replaced a canal and parterres on three sides of the house, and also created pleasure grounds in what had been a plantation. Brown turned the lakes into a single expanse of water by removing the dam between the upper long pool and the middle pool, making way for a new bridge. In 2016-7, an influential group of organisations and landowners marked the 300th anniversary of Capability Brown's birth with a nation­wide festival celebrating his life - guided walks, musical event, theatre productions and family activities. And Capabili-Teas, C18th-style tea parties.

Money raising and organising was done by the Landscape Institute, on behalf of a partnership which included the Association of Gardens Trusts, English Heritage, Garden History Society, Historic Houses Association, National Gardens Scheme, Parks & Gardens UK, Natural England, Visit Britain, Visit England and National Trust. Their first goal was to bring the special quality of Brown’s landscapes to a wider audience, both nationally and internationally. The second goal was to have as many of Brown's parks and gardens open to the public as possible. The third goal was to fix Brown at the forefront of modern thinking on design, and on the management of the natural environment.

A remarkable collection of watercolour paintings and drawings, once owned by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, went on show at Hampton Court Palace. Never displayed before, the exhibition of 60 detailed views of the palace, park and gardens nicely captured Hampton Court during the time when Capability Brown served there as Chief Gardener to King George III. This intriguing collection appar­ently had remained forgotten in the State Hermitage Museum archives in St Petersburg.

Hannah Northam's portrait bust of Brown

2016

No portrait bust existed of Brown. So Haddonstone, maker of architectural stonework, commissioned sculptor Hannah Northam to create a new stonework piece. Examine the bust and see that it does indeed look like Brown's 1773 portrait by Nathaniel Dance (National Gallery). The completed work went on display at Blenheim, and in Haddonstone’s own show gardens in East Haddon near Northampton.

The festival showed a play called Mr Brown’s Directions that was produced at Burton Constable. And Capability Brown themed guided garden tours were held at Bowood House in Wiltshire. Visitors were taken along the lake, to the hidden cascade and through the arboretum, followed by a lunch in the House Restaurant. The rest of the day was free to explore the historic Georgian house and grounds.

Compton Verney in its Brown landscaped park

near Stratford-upon-Avon.

Was Capability Brown always admired? Of course not.. tastes come and tastes go. Brown's reputation declined somewhat after his death, because his landscape style was gentle and undulating. It was not remotely dramatic nor did it express the full conflict of wild nature. In the C19th Brown’s critics were bored with his work.

one of Compton Verney galleries

Many thanks to the Lancelot Capability Brown: a Research Impact Review, University of East Anglia.