Thursday, 3 October 2013

William Gilpin and The Picturesque: Dorset Landscape, 1798


Observations on the Western Parts of England, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty: To which are Added, a Few Remarks on the Picturesque Beauties of the Isle of Wight

Read here, pages 274-300

or here,

Adapting some lines from James Thomson's poem Lavinia, (Gilpin changes 'for loveliness' to 'such landscape'), Rev. Gilpin cites:

"Such landscape
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament;
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most".

Gilpin is not very impressed by the area around Poole: "little picturesque scenery...a tolerable Dutch landscape".

Of Dorchester:

"Few places in England have been more considerable in Roman times than Dorchester. Poundbury and Maiden-castle, as they are called, are both extraordinary remains of Roman stations....Numberless tumuli also are thrown up all over the downs. These were antiquities in the times even of the Romans themselves".

When writing of the downs near Badbury Rings and Eastbury, The Reverend Gilpin quotes, or slightly misquotes, from James Thomson again (The Seasons, 1730):

                                         'pure Dorsetian downs,
In boundless prospect; yonder shagged with woods,
Here rich with harvest, and there white with flocks!'

Full quotation here (lines 653-658)

'Oh lose me in the green delightful walks
Of, DODINGTON, thy seat, serene and plain;
Where simple Nature reigns; and every view,
Diffusive spreads the pure Dorsetian downs,
In boundless prospect; yonder shagg'd with wood,
Here rich with harvest, and there white with flocks!'

Read also: 'Remarks on Forest Scenery, with Other Woodland Views', with scenes of the New Forest

Remarks on forest scenery, and other woodland views (relative chiefly to picturesque beauty), illustrated by the scenes of New Forest in Hampshire (1791)

On Rev. Gilpin (1724-1804) and the New Forest:

"...the forest was much more than his own parish. To Parson Gilpin (also the high priest of the picturesque). it was the essential England- not just the abode of ancient oaks and wild ponies but the seat of English liberty and its long resistance to despotism". Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, 1995, p. 137

See also Wikipedia: The Picturesque

Poundbury Hill Fort, from British History Online



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