Landscape

Abstract

In eighteenth-century England, three quarters of the population lived in the country and, except in London, no town-dweller was more than an hour’s walk from the wildest places. Natural scenery was part of everybody’s daily experience, but it was taken for granted and little attention was paid to it. Mentioning Bagshot Heath, Defoe found it ‘horrid and frightful to look on, not only good for little, but good for nothing’. That was a widespread feeling, especially at the beginning of the century, when it was considered that ‘the proper study of Mankind is Man’ (Pope), and when a hierarchy existed among painting-genres, with portraits and historical scenes at the top of the scale, landscapes and still-lifes at the bottom. When nature was referred to — or enjoyed — in literature or in life, it was either in the tradition of poetic diction, or reminiscent of the soft scenery of south-eastern England, with meadows strewn with flowers, or verdant hills and dales (images influenced by Milton’s description of the Garden of Eden in book IV of Paradise Lost).