The Stourhead History
The early 1700s saw a frenzy of stately home building in the English countryside. Merchants and bankers grew wealthy from the proliferation of trade and commerce during the 1600s. They needed a showcase for their winnings. The Hoare banking family was among this roll-call of nouveau riche. Their chosen plot was Stourhead in the heart of Wiltshire, England. In 1727, architect Sir Colen Campbell designed and built their Palladian villa. Tradition has it that Henry Hoare II - also known as Henry the Magnificient - designed and laid out the garden of Stourhead so that, from every point of view, it appeared like the idealized landscape of the classical painter. Stourhead set a precedent for themed parks and gardens that has prevailed in the western world ever since.
The Stourhead Trail
Every visitor to Stourhead receives a map of the layout of the garden and all of its features, along with a suggested trail to follow. This is so he can derive the maximum enjoyment from the visit. The trail takes the visitor around the lake - the result of a dammed river - up hill and through forest, over bridges and into tunnels, and past several 'fabriques' or follies; the Temple of Flora, the Grotto, the Pantheon, and others. The garden is structured so that the visitor is always in view of at least one of these features, no matter what part of the garden he is in. Tradition has it that these 'Italian' views evoke the paintings of the artist Claude Gelee, better known as Claude Lorraine (1600-1682). Why did Henry Hoare create this simulacrum of an Italian landscape, instead of adhering to the precedent set by Renaissance gardeners, that is, setting strictly geometrical flower beds around fountains and pergolas?
Classicism, Claude and Stourhead
Born in the French province of Lorraine in 1600, he traveled to Rome as a young man and worked as a pastry cook until he became apprenticed to landscape painter, Paul Bril. By the 1640s, his untenable, classical style had emerged. Claude spent the rest of his life in Italy, making constant excursions to the Roman countryside, sketching subjects for the paintings he completed in his studio.The term classical denotes a construct whereby its separate parts harmonize into the monumental effect of the whole, (Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists). The garden at Stourhead definitely falls into this tradition, since every feature is subsumed into the entire 'picture', there being no disparate or discordant parts to intrude upon and unsettle the entire entity. The link with the paintings of Claude Lorraine would appear to be more than tenuous. The fabriques that we encounter on the garden trail all appear in at least one of his paintings.
The Paintings of Claude
For example, the cave in Landscape with David at the Cave of Adullam fills the onlooker with the same foreboding that you enter the grotto in the garden. Inside the grotto, it is dark, you hear the sound of rushing water, and white-painted, classical deities glow eerily in the gloom. But that is closest that we get to fantasy.The bridge across the lake in the background of Landscape with Hagar and the Angel parallels with the Palladian bridge across the Stourhead lake, while both the Pantheon and the Temple of Flora appear in Landscape with Aeneas at Delos. Above all, there is a tangible, Claudean atmosphere about Stourhead, wonderfully defined by Helen Gardner: the beauty of a broad sky...screens of dark trees to the left or right and sometimes at the centre, making stage-like wings that intensify the central light. Occasionally, a classical temple will appear in the cool shadows and some little idyll will play itself out inconspicuously in the foreground.
The Grand Tour
Eighteenth-century Europe was gripped by a frenzy for Neoclassicism, that is, a passion for the reinterpretation of existing classical styles. Because he was a scion of the eighteenth century, Henry Hoare II would most definitely have made the Grand Tour, that almost obligatory trip around France and Italy for every young gentleman of wealth and breeding. Such trips fostered friendships between fellow travelers, laying down social connections for life and engendering tastes in European foods and fashions, art and architecture, tastes that were imported 'back home'.
Signs, Symbols and Fashion
Hoare created a work of art that, though it could possibly be replicated, could not be dislocated from its original site. This removed it from the 'market' system, that of buying and collecting paintings, sculptings, and so forth, so familiar to his social class. As he themed Stourhead as an idealized slice of Italy, Hoare was buying into another system, that of fashion. Centuries later, philosopher Jean Baudrillard was to define fashion under the rubric of sign exchange. The recognisable fabriques of Claude's paintings, i.e., the signs, transformed what could have been merely a pretty piece of wooded land into an entire cultural experience. Nowadays, we are so familiar with themed parks and experiences, that we don't turn a hair when a new one is opened. How 'real' these experiences are is an argument for another day. In the meantime, if you are visiting Stourhead, do not go when it is raining, but wait for the sunshine - and it's well worth it, I promise.
Sources
- Art Through The Ages by Helen Gardner, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc, 1986.
- Baudrillard For Beginners by Chris Horrocks, Icon Books, 1996.
- The Yale Dictionary of Art & Artists, Yale University Press, 2000.
Mary Phelan - I am an art historian, magazine editor, design philosopher and fiction writer. I am also a sometime artist and photographer.
