ABSTRACT
During its long and commercially successful lifetime (1660s–1859), London’s Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was a brand leader in the sector of night-time entertainments. Illuminated spectacles of numerous coloured or variegated lamps, transparent paintings, mirrors, fireworks and dioramas all repeatedly drew people into the gardens. In addition to these brightly lit displays, the gardens also offered a range of dark attractions – the Hermit’s Grotto, the Submarine Caves and the Dark Walk. As the boundless depth of the dark sky was brought into tension against the proximity of darkly painted surfaces, the darkness of the real and the represented converged, producing different experiential dimensions of tenebrosity. Visitors could effortlessly move between the contrasting registers of intimate and infinite darkness. For many years, the combination of darkness and artificial light proved to be the essential ingredient in Vauxhall’s prosperity, drawing a diverse range of people eager to explore and enjoy the gardens’ evening pleasures set against the blackness of the night sky. Yet this profitable aesthetic partnership was threatened in 1826. Anxious about declining moral standards at the venue magistrates forced the gardens’ managers to illuminate the Dark Walk. This first and partial loss of darkness signalled the beginnings of a more widespread trend to push darkness away from the gardens and urban life in general.
