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Description: | This view of the gardens at Chiswick is one of a set of eight, of which five are now at Chiswick House; originally they belonged to Lady Elisabeth Boyle, the sister of Lord Burlington who commissioned the pictures and designed this important Neo-Palladian house and ideated its Italianate gardens. The painting is by Pieter Andreas Rysbrack (1690-1748) the elder brother of the better-known sculptor John Michael. Pieter Andreas was born in Antwerp and came to England in 1720; by 1729 he had entered Lord Burlington's circle. Rysbrack's importance results from his documentation of English gardens, which, as in this painting, he innovatively depicted from different angles, revealing both the scenographic and topographical variety of the site as well as showing the activities of gardeners and 'polite society' in the landscape. Rysbrack was the first in England to undertake such portraits of gardens, which later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gained considerable popularity with the rise of the picturesque movement. Among his followers are Roque and Rigaud who also both worked at Chiswick. This painting can be accurately dated to about 1729-31 on the grounds of architectural and landscape evidence: it shows the first phase of Lord Burlington's remodelling of the grounds at Chiswick, before William Kent's interventions of the 1730s. Horace Walpole was later to comment of the gardens at Chiswick that their scenery was 'worth more than many fragments of ancient grandeur'. The area of the garden seen in this view has largely been destroyed by modern urban development. | Subjects: | landscape (Chiswick House gardens); buildings and gardens | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Rysbrack, Pieter Andreas (Flemish painter, ca. 1684-1748) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8729... | Go to resource |
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