William Gilpin’s 1794 essay ‘On Picturesque Travel’ discusses the picturesque mode of beauty. This beauty is characterised by roughness and variety. Yet Gilpin is not only preoccupied with the visual qualities of the picturesque: he emphasises the process of perceiving it - of ‘seeing’ and ‘feeling’ it. The passage offers ideas about the relationship between these sensations, as well as highlighting the cultural implications of Gilpin’s understanding of beauty.
The relationship between seeing and feeling is immediately addressed with Gilpin’s suggestion that the external world has internal effects - the image of the ‘barren country’, for example, can induce feelings of ‘discontent’. However, the feeling which most concerns Gilpin is ‘amusement’. The intimacy between sight and feeling is intensified by the phrase ‘amuse the eye’: amusement is an emotional reaction, yet the optical organ of the body is here bestowed with the capacity to feel that emotion. This feeling is derived from viewing nature’s ‘multiplicity’, which is the essence of picturesque beauty. Gilpin’s use of imagery depicts this species of beauty - the contrast between the ‘dark hill’ and ‘lighter distance’ illustrates the diversity of the landscape’s elements. The asyndetic listing in ‘cattle, flocks of sheep, heath-cocks, grous, plover’ further this: the animals are varied. The nouns ‘richness’ and ‘crumbling’ which describe the scenery are also somewhat divergent – while the former connotes lavishness, the latter is suggestive of disintegration. This visual multiplicity functions as an alternative to the ‘grand scenery of nature’ we may not have the opportunity to see, and invokes pleasure: Gilpin presents the ironic idea that a ‘wonderfully pleasing’ feeling is produced on viewing the ‘deficiencies of landscape’. This notion of visual inadequacy inciting satisfaction portrays the relationship between seeing and feeling as slightly paradoxical: the picturesque rouses pleasure even in the most unpromising places.
While the ‘rude’ landscape incites amusement, Gilpin discusses the feelings of repulsion evoked by ‘productions of art’. The extract in itself demonstrates a strong sense of feeling with the passionate tone of ‘how puerile, how absurd!’ Pleasure is aroused when nature is ‘pure’, and this authenticity is found in the roughness and irregularity of picturesque beauty. Yet Gilpin offers broader ideas about feeling: he not only seems concerned with the gratifying emotions induced by seeing the picturesque, but by feeling as the tangibility of the landscape. This is highlighted with the adjectives ‘flat’ and ‘smooth’, demonstrating an interest in the texture of nature’s surfaces. Picturesque beauty is, in fact, defined by texture: roughness is a tangible quality. Thus feeling is not simply described as an emotional response, but relates to the tactile experience of nature. Distinctions between seeing and feeling therefore become rather blurred: both are a form of physical, immediate participation in nature. This blurring of distinctions is furthered by Gilpin’s view that taste is ‘refined [by] the study of nature’. If this examination of nature occurs during picturesque travel, ‘taste’ can be understood as the perception and comprehension of picturesque beauty. The picturesque, then, is not only a visual category but a mode of feeling in itself; a ‘taste’.
Yet Gilpin’s description of picturesque beauty also bears some cultural implications. The phrase ‘patches of heath’ conjures the image of an uncultivated land. Gilpin even states that ‘houses, and towns, the haunts of men [...] have much oftener a bad effect in the Landscape’. Gilpin was writing during a time of profound agricultural change: the popularity of enclosure was increasing, with two million new acres of land being brought into cultivation. The picturesque ‘celebration of the irregular, preenclosed landscape [harkened] to an old order of rural paternalism’. The bitter exclamatory ‘How [...] insipid is the garden-scene!’ indicates Gilpin’s text may have been a pessimistic response to the rising prominence of forms of enclosure, such as Capability Brown. Alternatively, Gilpin’s image of the ‘barren land’ can be viewed to encourage agricultural development, in depicting a vacant rural space that is ripe for exploitation.
Gilpin’s characterisation of picturesque beauty seems inconsistent at times. The contradictory quality of the phrases ‘multiplicity of parts’ and ‘general simplicity’ demonstrates this. This paradoxical description makes the definition of the picturesque somewhat obscure. Gilpin states that the variety of the picturesque offers an alternative to the ‘grand scenery of nature’. However, the adjective in ‘vast tracts’ implies there is some form of grandeur in the picturesque landscape. This is underpinned by the phrase ‘she covers every surface’: nature is portrayed as all encompassing, suggesting its scenery is ‘grand’. These inconsistencies, however, can be interpreted as a reflection of picturesque beauty. The final section of the passage relates to this: ‘the varieties of nature’s charts are such, that, study them as we can, new varieties will always arise’. It is thus arguable that the extract itself embodies the experience of seeing and feeling in the landscape: the uncertainty in Gilpin’s description of the picturesque echoes the continual emergence of ‘new varieties’ in nature. Just as nature is always changing, the reader’s perception of the picturesque in his text is susceptible to variation. While Gilpin characterises the picturesque by irregularity and roughness, his ideas never seem entirely conclusive as the ‘refinement’ of our taste is ongoing: ‘fresh sources of both pleasure and amusement’ are constantly furnished; the experience of seeing and feeling is always changing. This ‘refinement’ presents another contradiction. The noun connotes enhancement - movement towards perfection; some kind of ideal. Yet Gilpin’s earlier condemnation of art aiming too much at beauty ‘than she ought’ can similarly be viewed as a form of ‘refinement’ in its great enhancement of beauty. It appears that ‘the more [Gilpin] defines beauty, the further he flies from nature’.
Overall, picturesque beauty never seems entirely definable as it is founded upon nature’s continually changing elements. Nevertheless, it can be learned about, and it is this learning journey which concerns Gilpin principally. The sensations of seeing and feeling constitute this journey, and are pertinent to understanding the picturesque as its beauty ‘lies more in the expectation than the attainment’. In other words, picturesque beauty lies more in the journey than a final image of beauty. The processes of seeing and feeling seem to represent the true beauty of the picturesque in its being an encounter; a ‘quest’. The picturesque goes beyond a mode of beauty: it is an entire experience in itself.
Bibliography
Bermingham, Ann, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986)
Gilpin, William, Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 2nd edn (London: R. Blamire, 1792)
Copley, Stanley and Peter Garside, The Politics of the Picturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 70
Stanley Copley and Peter Garside, ‘Romantic explorers and picturesque travellers’ in The Politics of the Picturesque (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 178
Copley and Garside, p. 179
