Capability Brown, garden genius

BIOGRAPHY: The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot "Capability" Brown 1716-1783By Jane Brown Chatto Windus, 384pp. £20

IN 1762 James Fitzgerald, first duke of Leinster, wrote to Lancelot Brown, then living on the outskirts of London, offering him £1,000 to cross the Irish Sea and create a picturesque garden at Carton, in Co Kildare. The invitation was declined, Brown allegedly replying that “he had not yet finished England”. Yet it should not be imagined that, as a result of his refusal, this country missed the opportunity for its parklands to undergo what a contemporary admirer called “Brownifications”. The links between Brown’s English patrons and Ireland were plentiful: one of his earliest supporters, the sixth earl of Coventry, was married to the beautiful Maria Gunning, from Co Roscommon; another client, albeit on his newly acquired English estate, was John Fitzmaurice, son of the first earl of Kerry.

Admiration for Brown’s style of gardening was by no means confined to these islands: “I am at present madly in love with English gardens,” wrote Empress Catherine of Russia to Voltaire in 1772, “with curved lines, gentle slopes, lakes formed from swamps, and archipelagos of solid earth”. The craze for so-called English gardens not only swept across Europe: it also swept away the previous era’s taste for formal arrangements of parterre, allee and canal, which had reached its apogee in Le Nôtre’s work at Versailles. In place of visible artifice came apparent naturalism, an art that concealed art to give the impression of having been created organically rather than through the labours of man.

It can be argued that the formal jardin à la françaiseis more honest than its successor, as no effort has been made to conceal the work involved in its formation and maintenance. But the evolution of the English garden provides an example of the early Romantic movement's readiness to allow feeling to trump logic. Thus, in order to create a satisfying image, frequently inspired by the paintings of Claude Lorrain brought home by English milords from their grand tours, it was deemed permissible for a landscape to be worked into a more "natural" state than had originally been the case.

Lancelot Brown, today most commonly known as “Capability”, was the most successful practitioner of this approach in the second half of the 18th century. He was responsible for the design of some 200 parklands across England, at least 150 of which had as one of their principle features a newly created lake. Brown’s materials could scarcely have been simpler – earth, water and trees – yet, with only these, he constructed picturesque vistas sure to please the eye both then and now.

Two years after his death he was described as the “omnipotent magician” by William Cowper, who wrote, in The Task: “He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn, / Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise.”

During the course of his career Brown likewise rose from humble gardener to being courted by patrician landowners eager for him to perform his magic on their estates. “I should be glad to make what Improvements the scene is capable of,” another Irish peer, the first earl of Lisburne, wrote to Brown in 1772, “under the Direction of a Genius whose Taste is so superior, unrivalled.”

Twenty years after he had started on an annual salary of £25 in the gardens of Stowe, Buckinghamshire, Brown’s gross income was £6,000 a year, allowing him to send his sons to Eton and later to underwrite the cost of one of them becoming an MP. The son of a Northumberland steward, he had improved not only the English countryside but also his circumstances, a journey depicted by his new biographer, Jane Brown. A devotee, she writes with enthusiasm but not always with sufficient awareness of her prospective readers: like many fans, she is inclined to assume that everybody shares her passion. An unfortunate outcome in this instance is that she fails to provide adequate context, not least a basic chronological history of garden design before Lancelot Brown’s emergence. Anyone uninformed on this subject will remain so even after finishing her book. Not only are French gardening and its Italian origins scarcely mentioned, but the development of the English garden before Brown is poorly explained. He was a product of his age, yet insufficient credit is given to immediate precursors such as Philip Southcote and William Kent. Not for nothing did Horace Walpole write in 1751 of Brown’s work at Warwick Castle that “it is well laid out by one Brown who has set up a few ideas of Kent and Mr Southcote”.

Furthermore, where factual evidence is lacking, she is inclined to conjecture, a habit that drifts into irritating whimsy whenever her subject’s domestic life comes under scrutiny. That Lancelot Brown was a man of outstanding ability, possibly even genius, is not open to question, but the milieu in which that ability flourished requires clearer exposition than provided by his biographer. This is a book for existing admirers rather than those new to the subject.

Robert O’Byrne’s most recent book is a biography of Desmond Leslie published by the Lilliput Press