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113-425: Chetwynd Park is an 18th-century landscape garden with woodland, on the edge of Newport, Shropshire . The park can trace its history back to 1388, when it lay southeast of Chetwynd Park estate . The country house is now lost, but the medieval deer park survives as an agricultural showground, used for Newport Show and other events. The deer park was probably established early in the 18th century, and elements of

226-502: A folly , a picturesque recreation of an Ionic temple set in a theatre of trees. Between 1733 and 1736, he redesigned the garden, adding lawns sloping down to the edge of the river and a small cascade. For the first time the form of a garden was inspired not by architecture, but by an idealized version of nature. Rousham House in Oxfordshire is considered by some as the most accomplished and significant of William Kent's work. The patron

339-473: A rotunda (1720–21) designed by Vanbrugh. In the 1730s, William Kent and James Gibbs were appointed to work with Bridgeman, who died in 1738. Kent remade the lake in a more natural shape, and created a new kind of garden, which took visitors on a tour of picturesque landscapes. It eventually included a Palladian bridge (1738); a Temple of Venus (1731) in the form of a Palladian villa; a Temple of Ancient Virtues (1737), with statues of famous Greeks and Romans;

452-624: A Temple of British Worthies (1734–1735), with statues of British heroes; and a Temple of Modern Virtues, which was deliberately left in ruins, which contained a headless statue of Robert Walpole , Cobham's political rival. The garden attracted visitors from all over Europe, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau . It became the inspiration for landscape gardens in Britain and on the Continent. Stourhead , in Wiltshire (1741–1780), created by banker Henry Hoare ,

565-519: A charge of espionage (which Downes concludes was trumped-up) in September 1688, two months before William invaded England. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years, albeit in reasonable comfort. In 1691 he requested to be moved from Calais to Vincennes , at his own expense, where his treatment deteriorated enough to suffice his writing to Louis XIV , leading to his eventual transfer to

678-601: A convivial London "set of wits" but was also linking up with old friends and co-conspirators. A hero of the cause who had done time in French prison for it, could have been confident of a warm welcome. In 1703, Vanbrugh started buying land and signing backers for the construction of a new theatre, the Queen's Theatre , in Haymarket , designed by himself and managed by Vanbrugh along with Thomas Betterton and his associate William Congreve. It

791-498: A delegation to Hanover to confer the Order of the Garter on Prince George , later to become King George II. Vaughan Hart has shown how Vanbrugh's interest in arms and heraldry found expression in, and gave meaning to, his architecture. In 1719, at St Lawrence's Church, York (since rebuilt), Vanbrugh married Henrietta Maria Yarburgh of Heslington Hall , York, aged 26 to his 55. In spite of

904-557: A distant view from above of the impressive ruins of Fountains Abbey . At Stowe, Capability Brown followed the new fashion between 1740 and 1753 by adding a new section to the park, called Hawkwelle Hill or the Gothic promenade, with a Gothic revival building. Walpole had decided in 1751 "to go Gothic", as he put it in a letter, and thereafter was a leading propagandist for the style, with his own house, Strawberry Hill in Twickenham , still

1017-564: A drama of sententious morality. Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift , with its reformed rake and sentimental reconciliation scene, can be seen as a forerunner of this drama. Although Vanbrugh continued to work for the stage in many ways, he produced no more original plays. With the change in audience taste away from Restoration comedy, he turned his creative energies from original composition to dramatic adaptation/translation, theatre management, and architecture. The precise reasons and motivations behind Vanbrugh's change in career remain unclear, but

1130-558: A long-running conflict between pinchpenny management and disgruntled actors came to a head and the actors walked out. A new comedy staged with the makeshift remainder of the company in January 1696, Colley Cibber 's Love's Last Shift , had a final scene that to Vanbrugh's critical mind demanded a sequel, and even though it was his first play he threw himself into the fray by providing it. Cibber's Love's Last Shift Colley Cibber's notorious tear-jerker Love's Last Shift, Or, Virtue Rewarded

1243-563: A new play comes out on Saturday revives their reputation, they must break". That new play, The Relapse , did turn out a tremendous success that saved the company, not least by virtue of Colley Cibber again bringing down the house with his second impersonation of Lord Foppington. "This play (the Relapse )", writes Cibber in his autobiography forty years later, "from its new and easy Turn of Wit, had great Success". Vanbrugh's second original comedy, The Provoked Wife , followed soon after, performed by

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1356-430: A number of Romantic elements. Always present is a pond or small lake with a pier or bridge. Overlooking the pond is a round or hexagonal pavilion , often in the shape of a monopteros , a Roman temple. Sometimes the park also has a "Chinese" pavilion . Other elements include a grotto and imitation ruins . A second style of English garden, which became popular during the 20th century in France and northern Europe,

1469-476: A parenthesis; there I end it with a period and start on another theme." Brown designed 170 gardens. The most important were: Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. Repton hit upon the idea of becoming a "landscape gardener" (a term he himself coined) after failing at various ventures and, sensing an opportunity after Brown's death,

1582-473: A play with a big, flamboyant part for himself: the Frenchified fop Sir Novelty Fashion. Backed up by Cibber's own uninhibited performance, Sir Novelty delighted the audiences. In the serious part of Love's Last Shift , wifely patience is tried by an out-of-control Restoration rake husband, and the perfect wife is celebrated and rewarded in a climactic finale where the cheating husband kneels to her and expresses

1695-438: A practising architect, Vanbrugh designed and worked on numerous buildings. More often than not his work was a rebuild or remodel, such as that of Kimbolton Castle , where Vanbrugh had to follow the instructions of his patron. Consequently these houses, which often claim Vanbrugh as their architect, do not best display his own architectural concepts and ideas. In the summer of 1699 as part of his architectural education Vanbrugh made

1808-419: A series of views and tableaux decorated with allegorical statues of Apollo, a wounded gladiator, a lion attacking a horse, and other subjects. He placed eyecatchers , pieces of classical architecture, to decorate the landscape, and made use of the ha-ha , a concealed ditch that kept grazing animals out of the garden while giving an uninterrupted vista from within. Finally, he added cascades modelled on those of

1921-576: A sloping "Alpine Valley" of conifers , as one of the best of the new style of "forest or savage gardens". This was a style of woodland aiming at the sublime , a newly-fashionable concept in literature and the arts, or at the least to be picturesque , another new term. It really required steep slopes, even if not very high, along which paths could be made revealing dramatic views, by which contemporary viewers who had read Gothic novels like Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) were very ready to be impressed. The appropriate style of garden buildings

2034-658: A tour of northern England, writing to Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester , (he was still an Earl at the time) on Christmas Day of that year: 'I have seen most of the great houses in the North, as Ld Nottings (sic): Duke of Leeds Chattesworth (sic) &C.' This itinerary likely included many of the great Elizabethan houses, including: Burghley House , Wollaton Hall , Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle , whose use of towers, complex skylines, bow widows and other features would be reinterpreted in Vanbrugh's own buildings. Though Vanbrugh

2147-482: A tutor. Architectural historian Kerry Downes is sceptical of earlier historians' claims of a lower middle-class background, and writes that a 19th-century suggestion that Giles Vanbrugh was a sugar-baker has been misunderstood. " Sugar-baker " implies wealth, as the term refers not to a maker of sweets but to the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from Barbados . Sugar refining would normally have been combined with sugar trading, which

2260-457: Is annexed, a Description of their Temples, Houses, Gardens, &c. published in 1757. In 1761 he built the Great Pagoda , London, as part of Kew Gardens , a park with gardens and architecture symbolizing all parts of the world and all architectural styles. Thereafter Chinese pagodas began to appear in other English gardens, then in France and elsewhere on the continent. French observers coined

2373-622: Is based on the style of the late 19th-century English cottage garden , with abundant mixed planting of flowers, intended to appear largely unplanned. John Vanbrugh Sir John Vanbrugh ( / ˈ v æ n b r ə / ; 24 January 1664 (baptised) – 26 March 1726) was an English architect, dramatist and herald , perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard . He wrote two argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies , The Relapse (1696) and The Provoked Wife (1697), which have become enduring stage favourites but originally occasioned much controversy. He

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2486-473: Is best known in connection with stately houses, the parlous state of London's 18th-century streets did not escape his attention. It was reported in the London Journal of 16 March 1722–23: "We are informed that Sir John Vanbrugh, in his scheme for new paving the cities of London and Westminster, among other things, proposes a tax on all gentlemen's coaches, to stop all channels in the street, and to carry all

2599-558: Is best known today as an early 18th-century social gathering point for culturally and politically prominent Whigs, including many artists and writers ( William Congreve , Joseph Addison , Godfrey Kneller ) and politicians (the Duke of Marlborough , Charles Seymour , the Earl of Burlington , Thomas Pelham-Holles , Sir Robert Walpole and Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham who gave Vanbrugh several architectural commissions at Stowe ). Politically,

2712-574: Is characteristically on a smaller scale; many are in or on the edge of cities, rather than in the middle of the countryside. Such gardens usually lack the sweeping vistas of gently rolling ground and water, which in England tend to be set against a woodland background with clumps of trees and outlier groves. Instead, they are often more densely studded with "eye-catchers", such as grottoes , temples , tea-houses , belvederes , pavilions , sham ruins , bridges, and statues. The name English garden – not used in

2825-566: Is hard to gauge, in April 1691 he was transferred to Château de Vincennes in the months he spent as a prisoner there he would have got to know the architect Louis Le Vau 's grand classical work (1656–61) in the château well. On his release from prison (he was at the Bastille by then) on 22 November 1692 he spent a short time in Paris, there he would have seen much recent architecture including Les Invalides ,

2938-530: Is not surprising, given the social expectations of his day, that by descent his credentials for his offices there were sound. His forebears, both Flemish/Dutch and English, were armigerous , and their coats of arms can be traced in three out of four cases, revealing that Vanbrugh was of gentle descent (Jacobson, of Antwerp and London [the family of his paternal grandmother Maria daughter of Peter brother to Philip Jacobson, jeweller and financier to successive English kings, James I , and Charles I , and monied backer of

3051-556: Is owned by the Newport and District Agricultural Society. As well as being the home of Newport Show , which is held on the second Saturday in July each year, there are a number of other events held there each year. In addition, the society has developed the educational potential of the deer park by building a classroom facility known as The Lodge in 2013 and as a result, many local schools and community groups as well as Harper Adams University visit

3164-569: The Bastille in February 1692. This raised the profile of his case once more, finally prompting his release in November of the same year, in an exchange of political prisoners. His life is sharply bisected by this prison experience, which he entered at age 24 and emerged from at 29, after having spent, as Downes puts it, half his adult life in captivity. It seems to have left him with a lasting distaste for

3277-528: The Collège des Quatre-Nations and the east wing of the Louvre Palace . His inexperience was compensated for by his unerring eye for perspective and detail and his close working relationship with Nicholas Hawksmoor . Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir Christopher Wren , was to be Vanbrugh's collaborator in many of his most ambitious projects, including Castle Howard and Blenheim. During his almost thirty years as

3390-544: The Dictionary of National Biography ). In 1681 records name a 'John Vanbrugg' working for William Matthews, Giles Vanbrugh's cousin. It was not unusual for a merchant's son to follow in his father's trade and seek similar work in business, making use of family ties and connections. However, Robert Williams proved in an article in the Times Literary Supplement ("Vanbrugh's Lost Years", 3 September 1999) that Vanbrugh

3503-635: The English country house , and many examples in the United Kingdom are popular visitor attractions today. The predecessors of the landscape garden in England were the great parks created by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) and Nicholas Hawksmoor at Castle Howard (1699–1712), Blenheim Palace (1705–1722), and the Claremont Landscape Garden at Claremont House (1715–1727). These parks featured vast lawns, woods, and pieces of architecture, such as

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3616-619: The Essonne department, (1784–1786). Even at Versailles, the home of the most classical of all French gardens, a small English landscape park with a Roman temple was built and a mock village, the Hameau de la Reine (1783–1789), was created for Marie Antoinette . The new style also spread to Germany. The central English Grounds of Wörlitz , in the Principality of Anhalt , was laid out between 1769 and 1773 by Leopold III, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau , based on

3729-623: The Second Virginia Company and the East India Company ]; Carleton of Imber Court ; Croft of Croft Castle ). After growing up in a large household in Chester (12 children of his mother's second marriage survived infancy), the question of how Vanbrugh spent the years from age 18 to 22 (after he left school) was long unanswered, with the baseless suggestion sometimes made that he had been studying architecture in France (stated as fact in

3842-600: The United Kingdom , where "landscape garden" serves – differentiates it from the formal Baroque design of the garden à la française . One of the best-known English gardens in Europe is the Englischer Garten in Munich . The dominant style was revised in the early 19th century to include more " gardenesque " features, including shrubberies with gravelled walks, tree plantations to satisfy botanical curiosity, and, most notably,

3955-423: The pleasure grounds in the 1860s. The country house was built on the banks of the 20-acre Chetwynd Pool, a small lake thought to have formed in the same way as nearby Aqualate Mere . In the 19th century, the park was filled with deciduous trees , including oak , beech , wych elm , horse chestnuts and Spanish chestnuts , and some crab apples . It was stocked with 115 Père David's deer . Before 1891, there

4068-495: The 'meagre genius of the bare and bald', criticizing Brown's smooth, serpentine curves as bland and unnatural and championing rugged and intricate designs, composed according to ' picturesque theory' that designed landscapes should be composed like landscape paintings, with a foreground, a middle ground and a background. Early in his career, Repton defended Brown's reputation during the 'picturesque controversy'. However, as his career progressed Repton came to apply picturesque theory to

4181-711: The Club promoted the Whig objectives of a strong Parliament , a limited monarchy, resistance to France, and primarily the Protestant succession to the throne. Yet the Kit-Cats always presented their club as more a matter of dining and conviviality, and this reputation has been successfully relayed to posterity. Downes suggests, however, that the Club's origins go back to before the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and that its political importance

4294-516: The College, however. The pageantry of state occasions appealed to his theatrical sense, his duties were not difficult, and he appears to have performed them well. In the opinion of a modern herald and historian, although the appointment was "incongruous", he was "possibly the most distinguished man who has ever worn a herald's tabard ." In May 1706 Lord Halifax and Vanbrugh – representing the octogenarian Garter King of Arms , Sir Henry St George – led

4407-539: The English garden was invented by landscape designers William Kent and Charles Bridgeman , working for wealthy patrons, including Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham ; Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington ; and banker Henry Hoare . These men had large country estates, were members of the anti-royalist Whig Party, had classical educations, were patrons of the arts, and had taken the Grand Tour to Italy, where they had seen

4520-452: The French political system but also with a taste for the comic dramatists and the architecture of France. The often-repeated claim that Vanbrugh wrote part of his comedy The Provoked Wife in the Bastille is based on allusions in a couple of much later memoirs and is regarded with some doubt by modern scholars (see McCormick). After being released from the Bastille, he had to spend three months in Paris, free to move around but unable to leave

4633-573: The Great adapted the new style in the park of her palace at Tsarskoe Selo , complete with a mock Chinese village and a Palladian bridge , modeled after that at Wilton House . A much larger park was created for her son Paul in the neighbouring estate of Pavlovsk . The Monrepos Park is sited on the rocky island of Linnasaari in the Vyborg Bay and is noted for its glacially deposited boulders and granite rocks. The continental European "English garden"

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4746-501: The King's Works had initially been the architect of choice, charging more than the Lord had thought reasonable. Vanbrugh's charm, and Talman's lack thereof, may have been enough to convince the patron to change his architect. However, it remains unknown how Vanbrugh, totally untrained and inexperienced, persuaded Earl Carlisle to grant the responsibility of architect to him. The design process began in

4859-564: The London stage. Vanbrugh's London career was diverse and varied, comprising playwriting, architectural design, and attempts to combine these two overarching interests. His overlapping achievements and business ventures were sometimes confusing even to Vanbrugh himself. A committed Whig, Vanbrugh was a member of the Kit-Cat Club  – and particularly popular for "his colossal geniality, his great good humour, his easy-going temperament". The Club

4972-540: The Palladian architecture of the houses he built. Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738) was the son of a gardener and an experienced horticulturist, who became the Royal Gardener for Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark , responsible for tending and redesigning the royal gardens at Windsor , Kensington Palace , Hampton Court , St. James's Park and Hyde Park . He collaborated with Kent on several major gardens, providing

5085-609: The Roman ruins and Italian landscapes they reproduced in their gardens. William Kent (1685–1748) was an architect, painter and furniture designer who introduced Palladian -style architecture to England. Kent's inspiration came from Palladio 's buildings in the Veneto and the landscapes and ruins around Rome – he lived in Italy from 1709 to 1719, and brought back many drawings of antique architecture and landscapes. His gardens were designed to complement

5198-422: The abused wife was especially famous as a tragic actress, and for her power of "moving the passions", i.e., moving an audience to pity and tears. Barry and the younger Bracegirdle had often worked together as a tragic/comic heroine pair to bring audiences the typically tragic/comic rollercoaster experience of Restoration plays. Vanbrugh takes advantage of this schema and these actresses to deepen audience sympathy for

5311-412: The active force behind the Glorious Revolution itself. Secret groups tend to be poorly documented, and this sketch of the pre-history of the Club cannot be proved. But as we have seen, young Vanbrugh was indeed in 1688 part of a secret network working for William's invasion. If the roots of the Club go back that far, it is tempting to speculate that Vanbrugh in joining the club was not merely becoming one of

5424-399: The actors' company, making himself sole owner. He was now bound to pay salaries to the actors and, as it turned out, to manage the theatre, a notorious tightrope act for which he had no experience. The often repeated rumour that the acoustics of the building Vanbrugh had designed were bad is exaggerated (see Milhous ), but the more practical Congreve had become anxious to extricate himself from

5537-406: The age difference, this was by all accounts a happy marriage, which produced two sons. Unlike that of the rake heroes and fops of his plays, Vanbrugh's personal life was without scandal. Vanbrugh died "of an asthma " on 26 March 1726, in the modest town house designed by him in 1703 out of the ruins of Whitehall Palace and satirised by Swift as "the goose pie ". His married life, however,

5650-415: The age, and Vanbrugh tailored The Provoked Wife to their specialities. While The Relapse had been robustly phrased to be suitable for amateurs and minor acting talents, he could count on versatile professionals like Thomas Betterton, Elizabeth Barry, and the rising young star Anne Bracegirdle to do justice to characters of depth and nuance. The Provoked Wife is a comedy, but Elizabeth Barry who played

5763-399: The botanical expertise which allowed Kent to realize his architectural visions. Kent created one of the first true English landscape gardens at Chiswick House for Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington . The first gardens that he laid out between 1724 and 1733 had many formal elements of a garden à la française , including alleys forming a patte d'oie and canals, but they also featured

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5876-449: The business in 1708 to Owen Swiny ., though without ever collecting much of the putative price. He had put a lot of money, his own and borrowed, into the theatre company, which he was never to recover. It was noted as remarkable by contemporaries that he continued to pay the actors' salaries fully and promptly while they were working for him, just as he always paid the workmen he had hired for construction work; shirking such responsibilities

5989-465: The classical mausoleum designed by Hawksmoor at Castle Howard. At the centre of the composition was the house, behind which were formal and symmetrical gardens in the style of the garden à la française , with ornate carpets of floral designs and walls of hedges, decorated with statues and fountains. These gardens, modelled after the gardens of Versailles , were designed to impress visitors with their size and grandeur. The new style that became known as

6102-467: The construction of the first Chinese-style building in an English garden, in the garden of Stowe House , at a time when chinoiserie was popular in most forms of the decorative arts across Europe. The style became even more popular thanks to William Chambers (1723–1796), who lived in China from 1745 to 1747, and wrote a book, Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils. To which

6215-473: The country, and with every opportunity to see an architecture "unparalleled in England for scale, ostentation, richness, taste and sophistication". He was allowed to return to England in April 1693; once he returned to England he joined the Navy and took part in an unsuccessful naval attack against the French at Brest . At some point in the mid-1690s, it is not known exactly when, he exchanged army life for London and

6328-400: The decidedly Protestant and sometimes radical milieu out of which Vanbrugh's own political opinions came. They also gave him a very wide social network that would play a role in all sections of his career: architectural, ceremonial, dramatic, military, political, and social. Taken in this context, though he has sometimes been viewed as an odd or unqualified appointee to the College of Arms, it

6441-511: The decision was sudden enough even to be remarked upon by commentators of his time: Jonathan Swift , in this quote, suggests that Vanbrugh had no previous training in, nor studied architecture, but applied himself to the discipline whole-heartedly. As an architect (or surveyor, as the term then was) Vanbrugh is thought to have had no formal training (see " Early life " above). To what extent Vanbrugh's exposure to contemporary French architecture during years of imprisonment in France affected him

6554-576: The deer park for educational purposes. 52°47′27″N 02°23′23″W  /  52.79083°N 2.38972°W  / 52.79083; -2.38972 This Shropshire location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Landscape garden The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins , bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The work of Lancelot "Capability" Brown

6667-424: The depth of his repentance. Love's Last Shift has not been staged again since the early 18th century and is read only by the most dedicated scholars, who sometimes express distaste for its businesslike combination of four explicit acts of sex and rakishness with one of sententious reform (see Hume ). If Cibber indeed was deliberately attempting to appeal simultaneously to rakish and respectable Londoners, it worked:

6780-510: The end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, French noblemen were able to voyage to England and see the gardens for themselves, and the style began to be adapted in French gardens. The new style also had the advantage of requiring fewer gardeners, and was easier to maintain, than the French garden. One of the first English gardens on the continent was at Ermenonville , in France, built by marquis René Louis de Girardin from 1763 to 1776 and based on

6893-622: The eye and create beautiful compositions, with an understatement criticizing the formal compositions of the gardens at the Palace of Versailles of Louis XIV of France . His observations on the Chinese garden were cited by the essayist Joseph Addison in an essay in 1712, who used them to attack the English gardeners who, instead of imitating nature, tried to make their gardens in the French style, as far from nature as possible. The novelty and exoticism of Chinese art and architecture in Europe led in 1738 to

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7006-454: The fact that Vanbrugh in January 1686 took up an officer's commission in his distant relative the Earl of Huntingdon's foot regiment. Since commissions were in the gift of the commanding officer, Vanbrugh's entry as an officer shows that he did have the kind of family network that was then essential to a young man starting out in life. Even so in August 1686 he left this position when the regiment

7119-552: The family and connexions of each of his four grandparents: Vanbrugh, Jacobs or Jacobson, Carleton, and Croft, summing up the characteristics of each line and concluding that, far from being of lower middle class origins, Vanbrugh was descended from Anglo-Flemish or Netherlandish Protestant merchants who settled in London in the 16th and 17th centuries, minor courtiers, and country gentry. The complex web of kinship Downes' research shows that Vanbrugh had ties to many of England's leading mercantile, gentry, and noble families. These ties reveal

7232-415: The fifth act. Vanbrugh laughed at these charges and published a joking reply, where he accused the clergyman Collier of being more sensitive to unflattering portrayals of the clergy than to real irreligion. However, rising public opinion was already on Collier's side. The intellectual and sexually explicit Restoration comedy style was becoming less and less acceptable to audiences and was soon to be replaced by

7345-523: The flat characters from Love's Last Shift a dimension that at least some critics are willing to consider psychological (see Hume ). In a trickster subplot, Vanbrugh provides the more traditional Restoration attraction of an overly well-dressed and exquisite fop, Lord Foppington, a brilliant re-creation of Cibber's Sir Novelty Fashion in Love's Last Shift (Sir Novelty has simply in The Relapse bought himself

7458-503: The garden of Villa Aldobrandini and Villa di Pratolino in Italy, to add movement and drama. Stowe Gardens , in Buckinghamshire , (1730–1738), was an even more radical departure from the formal French garden. In the early 18th century, Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham , had commissioned Charles Bridgeman to design a formal garden, with architectural decorations by John Vanbrugh . Bridgeman's design included an octagonal lake and

7571-436: The greater part of Castle Howard was inhabited and completed by 1709, the finishing touches were to continue for much of Vanbrugh's lifetime. The west wing was finally completed after Vanbrugh's death, to an altered design. The acclaim of the work at Castle Howard led to Vanbrugh's most famous commission, architect for Blenheim Palace. Regarding the commission, William Talman, an already established architect and Comptroller of

7684-658: The ideals of Jean Jacques Rousseau , who was buried within the park. Rousseau and the garden's founder had visited Stowe a few years earlier. Other early examples were the Désert de Retz , Yvelines (1774–1782); the Gardens of the Château de Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne , west of Paris (1777–1784); The Folie Saint James , in Neuilly-sur-Seine , (1777–1780); and the Château de Méréville , in

7797-400: The landscape seem even larger. "He sought to create an ideal landscape out of the English countryside." He created artificial lakes and used dams and canals to transform streams or springs into the illusion that a river flowed through the garden. He compared his own role as a garden designer to that of a poet or composer. "Here I put a comma, there, when it's necessary to cut the view, I put

7910-432: The large cast required by The Relapse . Members of that cast had to be kept from defecting to the rival actors' cooperative, had to be "seduced" (as the legal term was) back when they did defect, and had to be blandished into attending rehearsals which dragged out into ten months and brought the company to the threshold of bankruptcy. "They have no company at all", reported a contemporary letter on 19 November 1696 "and unless

8023-450: The later development of the English landscape garden was Lancelot "Capability" Brown (1716–1783), who began his career in 1740 as a gardener at Stowe Gardens under Charles Bridgeman , then succeeded William Kent in 1748. Brown's contribution was to simplify the garden by eliminating geometric structures, alleys, and parterres near the house and replacing them with rolling lawns and extensive views out to isolated groups of trees, making

8136-483: The main entrance block to the flanking wings, its centre crowned by a great domed tower complete with cupola , is very much in the school of classic European baroque. It combined aspects of design that had only appeared occasionally, if at all, in English architecture: John Webb's Greenwich Palace, Wren's unexecuted design for Greenwich, which like Castle Howard was dominated by a domed centre block, and of course Talman's Chatsworth. A possible inspiration for Castle Howard

8249-731: The main example of this style is Łazienki Park in Warsaw . The garden scheme owes its shape and appearance mainly to the last king of the country Stanisław August Poniatowski . In another part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth the Sofiyivka Park (Zofiówka), now Ukraine , was designed by Count Stanisław Szczęsny Potocki so as to illustrate the Odyssey and the Iliad . The style also spread rapidly to Russia , where in 1774 Catherine

8362-466: The major outbreak of the plague in London in 1665, or the Great Fire of 1666. It is possible that he attended The King's School in Chester, though no records of his being a scholar there survive. Another candidate would have been the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch , founded by Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon . It was also not uncommon for boys to be sent to study at school away from home, or with

8475-513: The models of Claremont , Stourhead and Stowe Landscape Gardens . Another notable example was The Englischer Garten in Munich , Germany , created in 1789 by Sir Benjamin Thompson (1753–1814). In the Netherlands the landscape-architect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard (1782–1851) designed several gardens and parks in this style. The style was introduced to Sweden by Fredrik Magnus Piper . In Poland

8588-554: The most extreme example of 18th-century "Gothick" style. According to some writers, especially French ones, the Far East inspired the origins of the English landscape garden, via Holland. In 1685, the English writer, formerly a diplomat at The Hague , Sir William Temple wrote an essay Upon the garden of Epicurus (published in 1690), including a passage which contrasted European symmetrical and formal gardens with asymmetrical compositions from China, for which he introduced (as Chinese)

8701-450: The new style was making woodland more interesting and ornamental, leading to the establishment of the woodland garden as a distinct type. This took several forms, one of which was helped by the developing Gothic revival . Horace Walpole , a great promoter of the English landscape garden style, praised Painshill in Surrey, whose varied features included a shrubbery with American plants, and

8814-424: The next, providing a natural progression of thoughts and style. Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle , a fellow member of the Kit-Cat Club , commissioned Vanbrugh in 1699 to design his mansion , often described as England's first truly baroque building. The baroque style at Castle Howard is the most European that Vanbrugh ever used. Castle Howard, with its immense corridors in segmental colonnades leading from

8927-844: The nineteenth century. Repton published four major books on garden design: Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), An Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening (1806) and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816). These drew on material and techniques used in the Red Books. These works greatly influenced other landscape-designers including John Claudius Loudon , John Nash , Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand , Hermann Ludwig Heinrich Pückler-Muskau and Frederick Law Olmsted . One aspect of

9040-557: The play was a great box-office hit. Sequel: The Relapse Vanbrugh's witty sequel The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger , offered to the United Company six weeks later, questions the justice of women's position in marriage at this time. He sends new sexual temptations in the way of not only the reformed husband but also the patient wife, and allows them to react in more credible and less predictable ways than in their original context, lending

9153-560: The plot, that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover, outraged some sections of Restoration society. In 1698, Vanbrugh's argumentative and sexually frank plays were singled out for special attention by Jeremy Collier in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage , particularly for their failure to impose exemplary morality by appropriate rewards and punishments in

9266-427: The pool, and at the bottom of the drive to the park. The northern part of the park featured a stone icehouse , probably dating from the mid- to late 18th century. Animals that live around the pool are shoveler , wigeon and occasionally goosander . As well as the wildfowl on the pool other birds of interest include all three species of woodpecker , nuthatch , treecreeper , raven , and buzzard . The deer park

9379-435: The practice of landscape design. He believed that the foreground should be the realm of art (with formal geometry and ornamental planting), that the middle ground should have a parkland character of the type created by Brown and that the background should have a wild and 'natural' character. Repton re-introduced formal terraces, balustrades , trellis work and flower gardens around the house in a way that became common practice in

9492-603: The project, and Vanbrugh was left spreading himself extremely thin, running a theatre and simultaneously overseeing the building of Blenheim, a project which after June 1705 often took him out of town. Unsurprisingly under these circumstances, Vanbrugh's management of the Queen's Theatre in Haymarket showed "numerous signs of confusion, inefficiency, missed opportunities, and bad judgment". Having burned his fingers on theatre management, Vanbrugh too extricated himself, expensively, by selling

9605-424: The rebel actors' company. This play is different in tone from the largely farcical The Relapse , and adapted to the greater acting skills of the rebels. Vanbrugh had good reason to offer his second play to the new company, which had got off to a brilliant start by premièring Congreve's Love for Love , the greatest London box-office success for years. The actors' cooperative boasted the established star performers of

9718-406: The return of flowers, in skirts of sweeping planted beds. This is the version of the landscape garden most imitated in Europe in the 19th century. The outer areas of the "home park" of English country houses retain their naturalistic shaping. English gardening since the 1840s has been on a more restricted scale, closer and more allied to the residence. The canonical European English park contains

9831-439: The summer of 1699, before the end of the year the model for Castle Howard was under construction, stone was being quarried and foundations discussed. It appears that the early drawings of the design for Castle Howard were made by Nicholas Hawksmoor , and in 1700 he was formally introduced by Vanbrugh into the project as draughtsman and clerk of works. Designs varied and evolved until 1702, the pair working together. In July 1700

9944-597: The term sharawadgi , in fact probably a mangled Japanese word for "irregularity". Temple had never visited the Far East, but he was in contact with the Dutch and their discourse on irregularity in design, had spoken to a merchant who had been in the Far East for a long time, and read the works of European travellers there. He noted that Chinese gardens avoided formal rows of trees and flower beds, and instead placed trees, plants, and other garden features in irregular ways to strike

10057-491: The term Jardin Anglo-Chinois (Anglo-Chinese garden) for this style of garden. Descriptions of English gardens were first brought to France by Jean-Bernard, abbé Le Blanc , who published accounts of his voyage in 1745 and 1751. A treatise, and tour guide, on the English garden, Observations on Modern Gardening , written by Thomas Whately and published in London in 1770, was translated into French and German in 1771. After

10170-506: The title of "Lord Foppington" through the corrupt system of Royal title sales). Critics of Restoration comedy are unanimous in declaring Lord Foppington "the greatest of all Restoration fops" (Dobrée ), by virtue of being not merely laughably affected, but also "brutal, evil, and smart" (Hume ). The Relapse , however, came very close to not being performed at all. The United Company had lost all its senior performers, and had great difficulty in finding and keeping actors of sufficient skills for

10283-425: The unhappily married Lady Brute, even as she fires off her witty ripostes. In the intimate conversational dialogue between Lady Brute and her niece Bellinda (Bracegirdle), and especially in the star part of Sir John Brute the brutish husband (Betterton), which was hailed as one of the peaks of Thomas Betterton's remarkable career, The Provoked Wife is something as unusual as a Restoration problem play . The premise of

10396-495: The untrained and untried Vanbrugh astonishingly managed to out-charm and out-clubman the professional but less socially adept Talman and to persuade the Earl of Carlisle to give the great opportunity to him instead. Seizing it, Vanbrugh instigated European baroque's metamorphosis into a subtle, almost understated version that became known as English baroque. Four of Vanbrugh's designs act as milestones for evaluating this process: Work on each of these projects overlapped with that on

10509-404: The water off by drains and common sewers under ground." Vanbrugh's chosen style was the baroque , which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, promoted by, among others, Bernini and Le Vau . The first baroque country house built in England was Chatsworth House , designed by William Talman three years before Castle Howard. In the contest for the commission of Castle Howard,

10622-463: Was Gothic rather than Neoclassical , and exotic planting was more likely to be evergreen conifers rather than flowering plants, replacing "the charm of bright, pleasant scenery in favour of the dark and rugged, gloomy and dramatic". A leading example of the style was Studley Royal in North Yorkshire , which had the great advantage, at what was known as "The Surprise View", of suddenly revealing

10735-494: Was knighted in 1714. Vanbrugh was in many senses a radical throughout his life. As a young man and a committed Whig , he was part of the scheme to overthrow James II and put William III on the throne. He was imprisoned by the French as a political prisoner . In his career as a playwright, he offended many sections of Restoration and 18th century society, not only by the sexual explicitness of his plays, but also by their messages in defence of women's rights in marriage. He

10848-518: Was General James Dormer , who commissioned Bridgeman to begin the garden in 1727, then brought in Kent to recreate it in 1737. Bridgeman had built a series of garden features including a grotto of Venus on the slope along the River Cherwell , connected by straight alleys. Kent turned the alleys into winding paths, built a gently turning stream, used the natural landscape features and slopes, and created

10961-465: Was a great arboretum at Chetwynd, which provided cuttings to plant the new church's drive (Leach 1891, 367). J.C.B. Borough also added a strip of land east of the park and north of the Longford, and created a drive to run around the outer edge of that extension, leading from Chetwynd Park to a new lodge on the Longford. This lay opposite the north end of Park Pool. There were other lodges at the south end of

11074-517: Was a lucrative business. Downes' example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool , estimated to bring in £ 40,000 a year in trade from Barbados, throws a new light on Vanbrugh's social background, one rather different from the picture of a backstreet Chester sweetshop as painted by Leigh Hunt in 1840 and reflected in many later accounts. To dispel the myth of Vanbrugh's humble origins, Downes took pains to explore Vanbrugh's background, closely examining

11187-612: Was also Vaux-le-Vicomte in France. The interiors are extremely dramatic, the Great Hall rising 80 feet (24 m) into the cupola. Scagliola , and Corinthian columns abound, and galleries linked by soaring arches give the impression of an opera stage-set – doubtless the intention of the architect. Castle Howard was acclaimed a success. This fantastical building, unparalleled in England, with its facades and roofs decorated by pilasters, statuary, and flowing ornamental carving, ensured that baroque became an overnight success. While

11300-410: Was ambitious to fill the gap and sent circulars round his contacts in the upper classes advertising his services. To help clients visualize his designs, Repton produced 'Red Books' (so called for their binding) with explanatory text and watercolors with a system of overlays to show 'before' and 'after' views. In 1794 Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price simultaneously published vicious attacks on

11413-456: Was attacked on both counts, and was one of the prime targets of Jeremy Collier 's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage . In his architectural career, he created what came to be known as English Baroque . His architectural work was as bold and daring as his early political activism and marriage-themed plays, and jarred conservative opinions on the subject. Born in London and baptised on 24 January 1664, Vanbrugh

11526-451: Was close to being standard practice in early 18th century England. Vanbrugh himself never seems to have pursued those who owed him money, and throughout his life his finances can at best be described as precarious. Vanbrugh's introduction and advancement in the College of Arms remain controversial. On 21 June 1703 the obsolete office of Carlisle Herald was revived for Vanbrugh. This appointment

11639-522: Was followed by a promotion to the post of Clarenceux King of Arms in March 1704. In 1725 he sold this office to Knox Ward, and he told a friend he had "got leave to dispose in earnest, of a place I got in jest". His colleagues' opposition to an ill-gotten appointment ought to have been directed to Lord Carlisle, who as Deputy Earl Marshal , arranged both appointments and against whose wishes they were powerless. Vanbrugh went on to make more friends than enemies at

11752-566: Was in India for part of this period, working for the East India Company at their trading post in Surat , Gujarat where his uncle, Edward Pearce, had been Governor. However, Vanbrugh never mentioned this experience in writing. Scholars debate whether evidence of his exposure to Indian architecture can be detected in any of his architectural designs. The picture of a well-connected youth is reinforced by

11865-434: Was intended for the use of an actors' cooperative (see The Provoked Wife below) and hoped to improve the chances of legitimate theatre in London. Theatre was under threat from more colourful types of entertainment such as opera, juggling , pantomime (introduced by John Rich ), animal acts, travelling dance troupes, and famous visiting Italian singers. They also hoped to make a profit, and Vanbrugh optimistically bought up

11978-442: Was mostly spent at Greenwich (then not considered part of London at all) in the house on Maze Hill now known as Vanbrugh Castle , a miniature Scottish tower house designed by Vanbrugh in the earliest stages of his career. A Grade I listed building, and formerly a RAF Boys' School, it is today divided into private apartments. Vanbrugh arrived in London at a time of scandal and internal drama at London's only theatre company, as

12091-434: Was much greater before it went public in 1700, in calmer and more Whiggish times. Downes proposes a role for an early Kit-Cat grouping in the armed invasion by William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution. Horace Walpole , son of Kit-Cat Sir Robert Walpole, claims that the respectable middle-aged Club members generally mentioned as "a set of wits" were originally "in reality the patriots that saved Britain", in other words were

12204-495: Was one of the first 'picturesque' gardens, inspired to resemble the paintings of Claude Lorrain . Hoare had travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour and had returned with a painting by Claude Lorrain. Hoare dammed a stream on his estate, created a lake, and surrounded the lake with landscapes and architectural constructions representing the different steps of the journey of Aeneas in the Aeneid by Virgil . The most influential figure in

12317-909: Was ordered to help garrison Guernsey . In spite of the distant noble relatives and the lucrative sugar trade , Vanbrugh never seemed to possess any capital for business ventures (such as the Haymarket Theatre ), but always had to rely on loans and backers. The fact that Giles Vanbrugh had twelve children to support and set up in life may go some way towards explaining the debts that were to plague John all his life. Some of Vanbrugh's kinsmen – as he addressed them in his letters: Vanbrugh's younger brothers, Charles MP and Philip , Governor of Newfoundland Colony , were naval commanders. Vanbrugh's own first and second cousins included Sir Humphrey Ferrers (1652–1678), Sir Herbert Croft Bt (1652–1720) , Sir Roger Cave Bt (1655–1703) and Cave's sister, wife of Sir Orlando Bridgeman Bt (1650–1701) . From 1686, Vanbrugh

12430-509: Was particularly influential. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden , and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk , the gardens of the future Emperor Paul . It also had a major influence on the forms of public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century. The English landscape garden was usually centred on

12543-556: Was the fourth child (of 19), and eldest surviving son, of Giles Vanbrugh, a London cloth-merchant of Flemish descent (as evident in the name, contracted from "Van Brugh") and Protestant background, and his wife Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Barker (by whom Vanbrugh's mother had the first of her twenty children, Vanbrugh's elder half-sister, Elizabeth), and daughter of Sir Dudley Carleton , of Imber Court , Thames Ditton , Surrey. He grew up in Chester , where his family had been driven by either

12656-479: Was working undercover, playing a role in bringing about the armed invasion by William of Orange , the deposition of James II , and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He thus demonstrates an intense early identification with the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy , with which he was to remain affiliated all his life. Returning from bringing William messages at The Hague , Vanbrugh was arrested at Calais on

12769-483: Was written and staged in the eye of a theatrical storm. London's only and mismanaged theatre company, known as the United Company, had split in two in March 1695 when the senior actors began operating their own acting cooperative, and the next season was one of cutthroat rivalry between the two companies. Cibber, an inconspicuous young actor still employed by the parent company, seized this moment of unique demand for new plays and launched his career on two fronts by writing

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