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An Essay on the Picturesque
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An Essay on the Picturesque

work by Price
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Quick Summary

"An Essay on the Picturesque" was a key work launched in 1794 by Sir Uvedale Price, a British landscape designer and aesthetician. The essay, along with Richard Payne Knight's poem "The Landscape," openly introduced the Picturesque movement in landscaping.1

Price's work was a reaction against the prevailing style of Lancelot "Capability" Brown, who favored simple, balanced compositions. In contrast, Price championed a profusion of natural details, such as withered trees and broken branches, to create wild, dramatic, and unkempt gardens. He viewed the Picturesque as an aesthetic category alongside the Beautiful and the Sublime, and as a quality inherent in nature that should be preserved or enhanced. The Picturesque style, characterized by pleasing variety and irregularity, influenced architecture and landscape gardening, often emphasizing the relationship between buildings and their settings.12

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4 Britannica Sources
  1. Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet
  2. picturesque
  3. picturesque
  4. landscape architecture

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