THE PICTURESQUE

THE PICTURESQUE

Aesthetic category referring to (1) the manner of presenting nature in painting and literature, (2) the way of experiencing nature and views in the landscape by painters, (3) the way of composing the landscape characteristic for landscape parks.

In the traditional sense, the picturesque is identical to painting (including technique, practical and theoretical interests that have contributed to the emergence of landscape as an art genre). In this sense, the concept of the picturesque appeared as early as the 16th century. The origins of the idea of picturesqueness in aesthetics, however, should be sought at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries in England and connected with a wave of modern interest in nature and the English landscape. At the end of the 18th century, the idea of the picturesque was in turn an English response to the romanticism spreading in Europe with its openness to sensuality. The rationale behind the category of the picturesque from the aesthetic perspective is the recognition that the beauty of nature stands above the beauty of art, John Locke’s concept of the important role of the senses in the process of human cognition and experiencing the world, and the popularisation of the category of aesthetic taste, which in the 18th century aroused more popular interest in the landscape.

The idea of the picturesque is characterised by ambiguity, which was already known at the time when it was triumphant. William Mason, one of the initiators of the debate about this category, presented 6 meanings of the term the picturesque. In his opinion, picturesque is what: (1) pleases the eye, (2) is unique, (3) gives the impression of a painting, (4) can be depicted as a painting, (5) is a theme for painting; moreover, he identified a picturesque view with (6) the landscape.

William Gilpin introduced the term to the glossary of aesthetic terms at the end of the 18th century, referring it to objects “to be painted” and “picturesque” qualities of space, i.e. everything that affects us by means of painting effects, gives pleasure and what can be conveyed on canvas using painting rules of form and composition. Gilpin, describing his journeys through England, Wales and Scotland, supplemented Edmund Burke’s division into beauty and sublimity with the category of picturesque beauty. As assumed by him, the picturesque includes what is not beautiful or sublime, but delights or arouses interest by its roughness or irregularity. The notion of the picturesque referred both to individual objects and to the landscape, characterised by novelty, changeability, dramaturgy of the stage and surprising the viewer. In this sense, he understood the picturesque as a more emotional than intellectual category. Archibald Alison and Richard Payne Knight associated the picturesque with feelings and subjectivity.

Painting was treated as a theoretical concept, which is possible to apply in practice. For example, such theorists of landscape architecture as Uvedale Price and Knight combined the picturesque  with gardening techniques to create picturesque sceneries (views). While Gilpin was looking for picturesque scenes in nature, Price suggested how to shape the landscape in newly established parks according to the category of the picturesque.

Both in theory and practice, the category of the picturesque was very closely related to visual experience. It was based on the demarcation of the landscape and the person who experienced it. In creating this concept, Gilpin referred to the real landscape and privileged the role of visual experience and learning about the environment in motion (on the move), making people observers of the landscape. Price also recognised that the picturesque is expressed through what is visual, but unlike Gilpin also saw the importance of the other senses in experiencing the landscape. He also pointed to the processual character of picturesqueness. He linked this category to time, claiming that objects become picturesque as a result of the action of time, which gives objects features such as roughness and results in wildness, deformation and ugliness.

The idea of the picturesque influenced fashion, lifestyle, interest among the English elite and the way they experienced the landscape. Nowadays, the term is often used to describe any aestheticised space, visually attractive landscapes in tourist brochures supported by photography, picturesque representation of the world and creation of its aesthetic image (Crawshaw and Urry).

[M. G., B. F.]

Literature:

Andrews, Malcolm. The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain 1760-1800. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Białostocki, Jan. Sztuka i myśl humanistyczna. Studia z dziejów sztuki i myśli o sztuce. Warszawa: PIW, 1966.

Crawshaw, Carol, Urry, John. „Tourism and Photographic Eye”. In: Touring Cultures. Transformations of Travel and Theory, Chrois Rojek & John Urry (eds.). Oxford: Routlegde, 2002.

Price, Uvedale. An Essay on the Picturesque as Compared with the Sublime and the Beautiful; and on the Use of Studying Pictures for the Purpose of Improving Real Landscape. London 1796.

Frydryczak, Beata. Krajobraz. Od estetyki the picturesque do doświadczenia topograficznego. Poznań: PTPN, 2012.

Gilpin, William. Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty, On Picturesque Travel and on Sketching Landscape, London 1794.

Morawski, Stefan. Studia z historii myśli estetycznej XVIII i XIX w. Warszawa: PWN, 1961.