Image: William Gilpin, Picturesque Mountain Landscape, 1792 and a television
In this talk, Professor Malcolm Andrews introduces the history and continued relevance of the idea of the ‘picturesque’. The talk centres on William Gilpin, the influential 18th-century New Forest writer who helped to create a taste for the picturesque. Andrews discusses Gilpin’s preference for rough-looking landscapes, early picturesque tourists, and historical and contemporary ways of framing landscapes through lenses and screens.
Malcolm Andrews is a renowned scholar and author of Landscape and Western Art (1999) and The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800 (1989); he was Professor of Victorian and Visual Studies at University of Kent.