Lauder, Sir Thomas Dick
Sir Uvedale Price on the Picturesque: with an Essay on the Origin of Taste, and Much Original Matter.
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Seller ID: 1373 Edinburgh: Caldwell, Lloyd, 1842. First edition thus (xxvi, 586). Illustrated with sixty scenes "designed and drawn [engraved] on the wood by Montagu Stanley, R. S. A." Tall octavo (22cm) in dark green publisher's cloth with gilt titles, gilt and impressed decorations. Lauder's edition, which came forty years after Price's essay first appeared, helped maintain the influence of notions of the picturesque (as over against the predictable formalities of neo-classical design) so that, for example, when Olmsted visited England in 1850 various manifestations of the aesthetic as well as its proponents were available to him. In the ODNB's biographical sketch of Sir Uvedale Price the matter is put this way: "Essentially, the Essay promoted in measured terms the more radical view of the picturesque landscape voiced by Richard Payne Knight in The Landscape: a Didactic Poem, Addressed to Uvedale Price.... Both authors argued that landscaping was safer in the hands of men of liberal education who understood the character of their own estates. Price, in particular, wished to revive the role of the amateur gardener�such as William Shenstone and Charles Hamilton�who eschewed the borrowed taste of a professional landscaper who, after a brief visit to an estate, in a remote part of the country�such as his native Herefordshire�would make inappropriate improvements. Like Knight, he believed that the sensitivity of the amateur improver was enhanced by a knowledge and understanding of the paintings of Claude, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. These paintings, set in a rugged classical landscape, where nature was about to engulf the works of man, provided a variety of vignettes, which could be used as a corrective in the late eighteenth-century countryside. Price was conscious that this was being damaged not only by professional landscapers but also by new agricultural practices, industry, and even the turnpike roads. It was this reaffirmation of the role of great art in moulding the countryside which underpinned Price's version of the picturesque." David Whitehead, 'Price, Sir Uvedale, first baronet (1747�1829)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. Minor bruising to the top and bottom of the spine, corners. A handsome copy. Price: $275.00
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