ABSTRACT
Around 1800, garden design theory struck a problem that, even today, is scarcely resolved. Gothein’s analysis was that practitioners had ceased to ‘look for art at all’,1 so that, ‘the whole of the nineteenth century must complete its tale of sins before the foundations are shattered’.2 Nineteenth-century architecture suffered a comparable fate. It was seen, with less clarity, as the dilemma of which historic style to apply in which circumstances. Artists also turned to historic themes but some individuals, less dependent on patronage than designers, were able to chart their own futures-a freedom that permitted the realisation of a personal vision. Gombrich commented that
‘it was only in the nineteenth century that the real gulf opened between the successful artists-who contributed to “official art”—and the nonconformists, who were mainly appreciated after their death’.3 Garden designers, like architects, and ‘successful’ artists,
neglected the quest for art to imitate ‘the nature of the world’. They saw only the superficial ‘world of nature’, soon to be captured by photography.
