La mirada pintoresca

Abstract

It is the purpose of this paper to present the picturesque not as an artistic style or a characteristic of certain objects, but as the intellectual means by which the British understood the world, land, landscapes and the city in the period between 1730 and 1830. In the second half of the 18th century the transformation of landscapes became more than just a fashion or rural pastime, emerging as one of the highest art forms and acquiring a name of its own in “landscape gardening”, which spread from Great Britain to Europe and America. Considered an art form in its own right, landscape gardening developed its own aesthetic categories, poetic principles and theoretical premises, which occupied the minds of philosophers, poets and scholars alike for more than 100 years, resulting in a surprising amount of intellectual considerations and publications. Its most representative aesthetic field was the picturesque, the principles of which were expounded by William Gilpin, Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price.