Sokolov, Boris M. Castle Howard, North Yorkshire: From a Garden of Memory to a Heroic Landscape

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa200-1-10
Title Castle Howard, North Yorkshire: From a Garden of Memory to a Heroic Landscape
Author email gardenhistory@gmail.com
About author Sokolov, Boris Mikhailovich — full doctor, professor. Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Miusskaia pl., 6, 125993 Moscow, Russian Federation.
In the section European Art in the Modern Times DOI10.18688/aa200-1-10
Year 2020 Volume 10 Pages 120–128
Type of article RAR Index UDK 712.01 Index BBK 85.118
Abstract

The paper discusses the history of creation and issues of influence of the country residence Castle Howard, North Yorkshire. The primal goal of its owner, Charles Howard, was to back his career at the court of William III, but after its crash he shifted his intentions towards philosophical and artistic qualities of the park. The grounds laid by a dilettanto architect Jonh Vanbrough and his assistant Nikolaus Hawksmoor include the forested hill Wray Wood, twin temples of Venus and Diana, the heroic landscape with a pyramide dedicated to the ancestor of Howard, and grand mausoleum. This park, created in 1700–1730s, was the first to feature a wide-open landscape decorated with antique forms and reminiscent of Poussin’s paintings.The grounds were never altered and the park served as a model of a large-scale park to garden masters and theoreticians. Horace Walpole was among them. The research is based on the text sources of the epoch andauthor’s field trips (1994 and 2016).

The history of creation and reception of Castle Howard allows to specifythe development of the English landscape movement.

1) The new style developed under the condition of the Enlightenment and the pressure of the social claim for “ferme ornee”, so the owner became an initiator and co-author of the artistic conception.

2) There are two parts in this process: gifted customers, “earls of creation”, such as Burlington, Marlborough, Howard, and outstanding architects, mainly of the amateur background,such as Burlington, Kent, Vabrough, and Hawksmoor.

3) The exemplary parks of the first stage of the landscape movement created new worlds organized on large scale by the rules of landscape painting. Although the rural landowners are impressed by this grandeur, they only use some features and ideas in their own “improvements”. Therefore, in the mid‑18th century, the epoch of the “earls of creation” yields to the epoch of Lancelot Brown whose repeating solutions fit almost all the lands. Grand parks such as Castle Howard became a sort of classic art, which is widely enjoyed but rarely, if ever, competed.
Keywords
Reference Sokolov, Boris M. Castle Howard, North Yorkshire: From a Garden of Memory to a Heroic Landscape. Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art: Collection of articles. Vol. 10. Ed: A. V. Zakharova, S. V. Maltseva, E. Iu. Staniukovich-Denisova. — Lomonosov Moscow State University / St. Petersburg: NP-Print, 2020, pp. 120–128. ISSN 2312-2129. http://dx.doi.org/10.18688/aa200-1-10
Publication Article language russian
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