Lancelot Capability Brown; C18 landscapes

Known as the Father of British Landscape Architecture, Lancelot Cap­ab­ility Brown (1716-83) started life as an estate worker's son. The Northum­b­erland lad trained as a gardener's boy at the local country house, Kirkharle Hall. By 1741 he had reached Stowe, a Bucking­hamshire estate where he became responsible for one of the loveliest landscape gardens in England. He stayed at Stowe for ten years and got married in the local church. Croome sits in Brown's landscape. Note the architectural reflections in the lake Claude and Poussin’s view of the Roman Campagna inspired naturalistic garden design and Brown refused to create formal, symmetrical French Baroque gardens. Instead he designed naturalistic, picturesque spaces with undulating grasses, tree clumps, curving lakes and flowing rivers. He wanted to create landscapes like those the C18th Grand Tourists saw in Italy.Naturalistic did not mean untouched. Capability Brown surveyed the land he had available to him and considered how to…