To Live in the New World: A.J. Downing and American Landscape Gardening

الغلاف الأمامي
MIT Press, 1997 - 242 من الصفحات

A. J. Downing (1815-1852) wrote the first American treatise on landscape gardening. As editor of the Horticulturist and the country's leading practitioner and author, he promoted a national style of landscape gardening that broke away from European precedents and standards. Like other writers and artists, Downing responded to the intensifying demand in the nineteenth century for a recognizably American cultural expression.

To Live in the New World examines in detail Downing's growing conviction that landscape gardening must be adapted to the American people and the nation's indigenous landscapes. Despite significant changes in its three editions, Downing's ATreatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening remained true to the original intent: to guide country gentlemen -- with enough money, time, and taste -- in the creation of ideal homes and pleasure grounds. While most historians and critics have focused on Downing's more formally written treatise, Judith Major gives equal emphasis to Downing's spirited monthly editorials in the Horticulturist. In the journal, Downing "spoke American" and encouraged his countrymen and women to practice economy, to use America's rich natural resources wisely yet artfully, to be content with a little cottage and a few fine native trees.

Although the book is not a biography, the people, events, and experiences that shaped Downing's thinking on landscape gardening are central to the story. Significantly, Downing spent his life in the spectacular natural setting of the Hudson River valley. Through his professional practice, travels, reading, and extensive correspondence, he gradually became aware of the individual and collective needs that he served. Landscape gardening, Downing came to feel, had to respect not only a client's desires and means, but also the nation's republican values of moderation, simplicity, and civic responsibility. Major takes a fresh look at the influence on Downing's theory and practice of British writers such as Archibald Alison, Uvedale Price, Humphry Repton, John Claudius Loudon, and John Ruskin, and analyzes for the first time his debt to the French academician A. C. Quatrem re de Quincy's Essay on Imitation.

من داخل الكتاب

المحتوى

PART I
7
Aspirations and Audience
10
To Garden Finely
11
The Love of Home
17
Who Does Not Love the Country?
21
Country Gentlemen and Large Landed Estates
26
Amateurs and Professionals
30
A Studied and Polished Mode
33
The Graceful and the Picturesque
80
The 1849 Edition
86
American Rural Gems
87
The Beautiful and the Picturesque
91
The Finest Form of a Fine Type
95
LANDSCAPE GARDENING AS A HARMONY
99
Aspirations and Audience
106
The Moral Effects of the Fine Arts
113

The 1841 Edition
36
The More Exquisite Beauty of Natural Forms
38
Here Where Nature Has Done So Much
43
General Beauty and Picturesque Beauty
46
Imitation in the Fine Arts and the Beau Ideal
53
The Superior Beauty of Expresssion
61
3
63
The 1844 Edition
66
The Reading of the Past
70
Comparatively Little Having Yet Been Done
73
The Master
78
The Spirit of Emulation
119
Novices Amateurs and Professionals
126
A THEORY AND PRACTICE ADAPTED
136
The Neglected American Plants
148
The Type of All True Art in Landscape Gardening
154
Horticulturist Editorials
167
Notes
185
Bibliography
217
Index
233
حقوق النشر

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

مقاطع مشهورة

الصفحة 220 - Theory and Practice of Horticulture ; or, an Attempt to explain the principal Operations of Gardening upon Physiological Grounds: Being the Second Edition of the Theory of Horticulture, much enlarged ; with 98 Woodcuts.
الصفحة 220 - Residence, or of a situation on which to form one ; the Arrangement and Furnishing of the House; and the Laying-out, Planting, and general Management of the Garden and Grounds ; the whole adapted for grounds from one perch to fifty acres and upwards in extent ; intended for the instruction of those who know little of Gardening or Rural Affairs, and more particularly for the use of Ladies.

نبذة عن المؤلف (1997)

Judith Major is Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning in the College of Architecture, Planning, and Design at Kansas State University.

معلومات المراجع