William Gilpin (priest)

William Gilpin ( born June 4, 1724 in Carlisle, † April 5, 1804 in Boldre ) was an English artist, clergyman of the Church of England, head teachers and writers. He became known as one of the originators of the idea of the picturesque ( picturesque beauty, " scenic beauty " ), by which he meant a derived from the disorderliness of nature 's beauty with image quality that he rose to the ideal of both the landscape painting as well as the English landscape garden.

Youth and professional

Gilpin came from the county of Cumberland, he was the son of John Bernard Gilpin ( born 1701), a captain and amateur artists. Since his early childhood William was an avid artist and collector of engravings and prints. Unlike his brother, Sawrey Gilpin, who was a painter, he decided after the completion of the Queen 's College, Oxford in 1748 for an ecclesiastical career.

During his time at Oxford was published anonymously his essay A Dialogue upon the Gardens ... at Stow in Buckinghamshire ( " A conversation about the gardens at Stowe ..."). With the book, the description of the garden combined with aesthetic observations, Gilpin began to develop the idea of ​​the picturesque. Contemporary even more unusual than his, explainable with the time spent in Cumberland childhood, appreciation of wild and rugged mountain landscapes, Gilpin was detached from considerations such as morality, or usefulness, exclusively aesthetic criteria undertook approach.

After working as a candidate and teacher at the school in Cheam he became its director in 1755. He was a teacher of enlightenment, corporal punishment replaced by a system of fines and to apply the boys encouraged gardens. Gilpin left Cheam in 1777 with his wife Margaret, to accept a position as pastor in Boldre ( New Forest, Hampshire ).

Gilpin's concept of the picturesque

1768 designated Gilpin in his Essays on prints ( " treatises on stitches " ), the picturesque as "the kind of beauty Which is agreeable in a picture" ( " the kind of beauty that is pleasing in a picture" ) and developed his " principles of picturesque beauty " ( " principles of picturesque beauty " ), which he largely founded on his knowledge of landscape painting. During the 1760s and 1770s, he checked the established rules on extensive traveling during the summer holidays; his landscape descriptions and sketches found their way into their own travel.

Gilpin Travel manuscripts circulated both among friends, to which the poet William Mason was one, and in a larger circle of Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole and George III. included. 1782 Gilpin published at the instigation of Masons in London, Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770 ( " observations along the River Wye and some parts of South Wales ', etc., mainly in terms of its picturesque beauty, made ​​in the summer of 1770 "). The book was illustrated with etchings of his nephew William Sawrey Gilpin, which he had made ​​by the still new aquatint process. The work was followed in 1791 a book about the Lake District and West England, and, after moving to Boldre, the Remarks on Forest Scenery, and other woodland views ... ( " Notes on forest scenes and other views wooded areas ...").

For Gilpin, a section of the landscape was only "right" picturesque when the scene fulfilled two conditions: they had of their nature, can be ( " rough ", " strange ", " varied ", " broken", without rectilinear details ) and in respect of assembling different elements include: a dark "foreground" with a direct view of a central or two lateral objects, a brighter " middle ground " and a remaining in the inexact " background " at a greater distance. The ruins of an abbey or castle could be added as activity-enhancing design element.

A low-lying position ( the viewer or stroller ) emphasizes the grandeur, the " Sublime ", and is therefore the view from an elevated location in any case preferable. Gilpin saw the natural characteristics of a scene in feature and coloring mostly met, but found fault with the most inadequate compositional whole: There in need of helping supplement by the artist, such as by judicious placement of an additional tree.

Unlike other travel writers of his time, such as Thomas Pennant, Gilpin acknowledged historical descriptions a little space and has also saved with facts and anecdotes. His descriptions beließen much of its range and is often confined themselves to represent the situation in terms of picturesque beauty. A much cited by Gilpin escalations consisted in the utterance, the skillful use of a mallet could help to necessary picturesque beauty of the unsatisfactory ruinous gable of Tintern Abbey.

Although Gilpin possibly sustain some criticism and occasionally the subject of much ridicule satirical ( William Combe. The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque A Poem (1812 ) ), he had hit the right time for his publications. Improved road connections to the British Isles with simultaneous travel restrictions on mainland Europe led to an increase of domestic tourism in the 1780s and 1790s. Many of the picturesque -seeking travelers recorded yourself or talking about what they have seen in terms of landscape painting. Gilpin's books were the suitable companion for a contemporary new generation of travelers.

Gilpin and the consequences

Although Gilpin expressed several times critical of artificial landscape designs, he looked at the picturesque mainly as a rule of nature description. There was another, especially Richard Payne Knight, Uvedale Price and Thomas Johnes left to develop Gilpin's ideas to broader aesthetic theories and to make application capable for landscape design and architecture. In the end, led all those great theories about the beauty of unbridled nature in the middle of the 19th century to a " tamed " picturesque beauty that was made useful for the commerce. Gilpin's work remained desungeachtet popular, published several new, added by John Heaviside Clark expenditure. Many a Photo Tourist likely unconsciously make Gilpin had become too commonplace perspectives of landscape to own in the motif search.

Gilpin published his writings except for picturesque numerous works on moral and religious topics as well as biographies of Hugh Latimer, Thomas Cranmer and John Wyclif. He used a portion of the proceeds of his books in his parish for charitable purposes including the equipment of the school in Boldre, which now bears his name. Many of his manuscripts, including all or part of previously unreleased material, preserves the Bodleian Library at Oxford.