Event information
Humphry Repton (1752–1818) ambitiously styled himself Capability Brown’s successor: the century’s next great improver of landed property. Developing a new aesthetic, which he termed ‘Ornamental Gardening’, his landscapes were laced with flowers and crammed with exotic features. Immortalized in Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, Repton turned his hand to everything from ghoulish garden mausoleums to George IV’s seaside palace, Brighton Pavilion. His famous Red Books – illustrated to help his clients visualize the potential of their properties – did much to encourage an appreciation of landscape aesthetics during the Regency period. This course traces his career from its picturesque beginnings to the progressive Gardenesque style, which both made his name and changed England’s relationship with nature forever.
