Eighteenth century England produced a remarkable number of classical landscape gardens that have survived such as Stowe, Rousham and Stourhead.
Throughout the century garden designers such as Capability Brown and Humphrey Repton reshaped many aristocratic parks replacing formal Baroque schemes with
varying approaches to the creation of a more natural relaxed look.
Behind much of this landscape design lies the influence of paintings, especially paintings in which an ideal world existed, inspired by the poetry of Virgil.
Seventeenth century painters in Rome such as Poussin and Claude created this world on canvas and Englishmen on the Grand Tour found them irrestibly attractive.
So much so that not only did they buy these paintings to take home, they had real landscapes created in the English countryside which would allow them to have their
own version of this Arcadian world literally on their doorsteps.
As the century moved towards its close the classical version came to be challenged by a wilder more romantic notion of what the landscape should be. The " classical"
picturesque gave way to the natural and picturesque landscape as described in the writings of Richard Payne Knight and others. This was also the period when more natural
landscapes came to be painted by Constable and many new devotees of watercolour painting.
Tom Duncan was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied History of Art and Ancient History & Classical Archaeology. He then studied for his Masters
in the United States and moved to England in 1984 to complete his Ph.D. For many years he taught at University level, and now lectures widely to heritage and
artistic organisations, nationally and internationally. He regularly leads tours through his own company, CICERONI, specialising in four areas: Ireland, Italy,
the Middle East and tours to leading musical and opera festivals throughout Europe. In November 2011 he lectured to us on Rome and the Grand Tour.
Venue - Norton village Hall
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