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[Anhalt, Duke of]

(b Dessau, Aug 10, 1740; reg 1756–1817; d Dessau, Aug 9, 1817).

German ruler and garden designer. After leaving the Prussian Army in 1757, he devoted himself to governing Dessau, instituting provision for the poor, public health and education. He made four journeys to England (1763–85) with Friedrich Wilhelm Erdmannsdorff, with whom he also travelled through Italy (1765–6). He studied for six months with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, whose ‘mimetic theory of the Ancients’ he realized in his garden designs. With Erdmannsdorff and his planters, he created gardens at Luisium (1774) and Sieglitzer Berg (1777) and most notably at Wörlitz (1764–1810), based on such English models as The Leasowes (Worcs), Stowe (Bucks), Kew Gardens (London) and Stourhead (Wilts). He was acquainted with William Chambers, Henry Holland, Sir William Hamilton (i) and possibly also Henry Flitcroft and ‘Capability’ Brown. As well as introducing the English landscape garden and Palladian country house to the Continent, the Prince also transplanted the Gothic Revival. The ‘Country House’ and ‘Gothic House’ at ...

(b Hamburg, Oct 2, 1757; d Pisa, Aug 18, 1806).

German architect, draughtsman, landscape designer and painter. He studied from 1778 to 1783 at the University of Göttingen and the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, where he was awarded four prizes. His early designs included drawings for the hothouse of the botanic gardens in Copenhagen and a lecture room at Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin. While visiting Paris in 1784–5 he devoted himself to the study of Revolutionary architecture, and in England and Italy (1786) he studied landscape design and ancient sites. In Rome in 1787 he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who later summoned him to Weimar to rebuild the prince’s Schloss. In addition to a number of designs for the palace at Weimar he produced drawings for various summer-houses. In 1790 he moved to Hamburg, his plans for the Schloss at Weimar still largely unexecuted. By the end of his life he had designed numerous public buildings and private houses in Hamburg, including the house for Bürgermeister ...

Park near Łowicz, Poland. The best-preserved 18th-century Romantic landscape park in Poland, it was founded in 1778 by the patron and collector Princess Helena Radziwiłł (1749–1821). She competed as a patron with Princess Izabela Czartoryska, and Arkadia was a response to the latter’s park (destr.), also called Arkadia, at Powązki, outside Warsaw. Princess Helena Radziwiłł conceived the literary and philosophical idea of the park, and in order to realize her project she employed Simon Bogumił Zug as designer.

The park covers c. 30 ha on the banks of an artificially formed lake, with the Isle of Sacrifices and the River Łupia. An area of wild, unimproved nature, the Elysian Fields, is laid out on the west bank. An English-style park, complete with pavilions, classical ruins, tombs, altars and grottoes, is situated on the east bank. The park is so designed and landscaped that the footpaths, lined with trees and shrubs, lead the visitor to its main feature, the Neo-classical Temple of Diana, from where there is a panoramic view of the lake and the park. The temple, designed by ...

British, 18th – 19th century, male.

Landscape artist.

C. Barrow exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1789 to 1802.

(b Paris, April 12, 1744; d Paris, May 1, 1818).

French architect and landscape designer. He had a distinguished career as a royal architect at the courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Although his fame rests on his accomplishments as a landscape architect, his mercurial talents are perhaps best characterized in his drawings for interior decoration and court festivals. After studying physics under the Abbé Nollet at the Collège de Navarre, Bélanger attended the Académie Royale d’Architecture in Paris between 1764 and 1766 where he worked under Julien-David Le Roy and Pierre Contant d’Ivry. He was not a successful student and left without achieving the illustrious Prix de Rome. Nevertheless, under Le Roy’s influence he was involved with the circle of Neo-classical artists, including Charles-Louis Clérisseau, who had recently returned from Italy. In 1767 Bélanger became a Dessinateur du Roi at the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs under Charles Michel-Ange Challe. Since the Menus Plaisirs were responsible for the temporary decorations and stage scenery for court festivities, Bélanger was involved with preparations for the marriage celebrations in ...

[Christie, Manson & Woods]

Auction house founded in London by James Christie (1730–1803). After a few years spent in the navy, James Christie worked as an assistant to an auctioneer named Mr Annesley in Covent Garden, London. He left Annesley in 1763 to set up on his own and in 1766 established his firm at the print warehouse of Richard Dalton in Pall Mall, where the Royal Academy held its exhibitions in its early years. In 1770 he moved his premises next door to Schomberg House, Pall Mall, where Thomas Gainsborough lived. The first known catalogue is dated 5 December 1766; it includes little of value except for a picture by Aelbert Cuyp. Christie rapidly established himself as one of the foremost auctioneers, however, cultivating a circle of friends and advisers that included Gainsborough, Reynolds, Horace Walpole, David Garrick, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Edmund Burke, and receiving many auction consignments from royalty and the nobility. During the French Revolution the firm did particularly well through the abundance of works then coming into Britain. Among the more notable early Christie sales were that of the former collection of Pope ...

(b New York, July 24, 1803; d Orange, NJ, Jan 14, 1892).

American architect. From the 1830s to the 1850s he was one of the most influential architects in the USA. His work ranges from major government and institutional buildings to ornamental garden structures; his main contribution to American architecture was his introduction of the European Picturesque in his designs for Italianate and Gothic Revival country houses and cottages. With his partner, Ithiel Town, he also refined and popularized the American Greek Revival. He revolutionized American architectural drawing through rendering buildings in romantic landscapes rather than in the analytical, Neo-classical style that preceded him. In 1836 he helped form the American Institution of Architects and advanced professionalism in American architecture through his scrupulous office practices, being, for example, the first American architect to use printed, standardized specifications.

At the age of 16, Davis left school in New York to work as a type compositor in Alexandria, VA. During this time, probably influenced by reading contemporary Gothic novels, he made drawings of prison and castle interiors akin to Piranesi’s engravings of imaginary prisons. In ...

(b Florence, Feb 14, 1778; d Florence, Feb 22, 1843).

Italian architect, landscape designer and teacher. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence under Gasparo Maria Paoletti, the leader of the Tuscan Neo-classical school, and won prizes for his projects in 1797; in 1801 he became a professor of architecture there and presented a project for a Pantheon of famous men to the Accademia. In 1803 he began to work for the Tuscan state, making important contacts in the Napoleonic period at a time when he is known to have become a freemason. His first important commission, received from the Accademia di Belle Arti, was the remodelling of the famous Cappella di S Luca (1810–13) in SS Annunziata, Florence, as part of a project to transform the convent into the new seat of the French bishop. Following the restoration in 1814 of the House of Lorraine to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, he played a prime role in the reconstruction of the Scrittoio delle Reali Fabbriche, first as Secretary, then Director (...

French, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1749, in Versailles; died 1825, in Paris.

Painter (including gouache), watercolourist, sculptor, draughtsman (wash), engraver, decorative artist. Mythological subjects, allegorical subjects, historical portraits, hunting scenes, interiors with figures, gardens. Stage costumes and sets, furniture, designs for fabrics, frontispieces.

Dugourc's father, who was in the service of the Duke of Orléans, had a considerable fortune. Dugourc was permitted to attend the lessons taken by the Duke of Chartres (the future Philippe-Égalité), and at the age 15 left for Rome, attached to the embassy of the Count of Cani. From his infancy, he had shown an aptitude for drawing, perspective and architecture. However, the death of his mother, followed shortly after by the loss of his father's fortune, changed his life. From being an amateur, Dugourc became a professional artist, and executed paintings, sculptures and engravings. In a work published in ...

British, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1769, in Paddington; died 1821, in London.

Painter, miniaturist, watercolourist, draughtsman. Portraits.

Henry Edridge may have been a pupil of Pether, the mezzotint engraver and landscape artist, but he excelled above all at miniatures, which he did in Indian ink and watercolour. Elected an associate of the Royal Academy in ...

French landscape garden near Senlis, at the edge of the forest of Chantilly, Oise. Laid out by its owner, Louis-René Marquis de Girardin, between 1766 and 1776, it became one of the most influential examples of the Picturesque garden in 18th-century France. In contrast to the flat terrain of many French parks, Ermenonville (approx. 850 ha) was varied and had an abundant water supply. Girardin made a large lake to the south of his modernized château; this flowed into two cascades, becoming a meandering stream north of the château. The lake and stream together defined the central north–south axis. The park itself he divided into four areas, in order to maintain the distinctly varied character of Ermenonville’s topography: the farm, east of the château, was essentially a ferme ornée, whereas the Désert, to the west, was a rocky landscape of sandhills, pine trees and boulders. The fine views to the north and south of the château, improved by the lake and stream, encouraged Girardin to exploit his domain—recomposing the landscape so as to resemble the scenery to be found in the works of celebrated landscape painters. Consequently, southerly views from the château—an area that included an ‘Arcadian’ field framed by the woods surrounding the lake, cascade and grotto—suggested paintings by Claude Lorrain; those to the north, a flat, marshy area containing a rustic mill, canal and windmill, evoked in the spectator’s imagination ‘northern, meditative’ landscapes. This latter area also included the Tower of Gabrielle (destr.), a Gothick tower dedicated to the mistress of Henry IV. Elsewhere, the views recalled the types of scenery associated with paintings by Hubert Robert, Salvator Rosa and Jacob van Ruisdael....

Italian, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1747, in Rome; died 1819, in Milan.

Painter. Landscapes with figures, landscapes, seascapes.

The son of Filippo Fidanza, he studied under Vernet and Lacroix. He was an accomplished landscape artist who worked for Eugène de Beauharnais.

Florence (Uffizi): drawings...

(b St Ouen, nr Paris, June 7, 1737; d Paris, Dec 29, 1818).

French architect and designer. He was the son of the gardener at the royal château of Choisy-le-Roi and attended Jacques-François Blondel’s school of architecture, the Ecole des Arts, winning third place in the Prix de Rome competition of 1759. He spent five years in Rome (1761–6) on a bursary granted by Louis XV, and he made friends there with Giovanni Battista Piranesi. He returned to France via Holland and England. In 1769, at the suggestion of the King’s surgeon Germain Pichault de la Martinière, he was commissioned to design the new Ecole de Chirurgie (1771–86; now the Faculté de Médecine, Paris). The layout is in the manner of an hôtel particulier, with a court surrounded by an Ionic colonnade and closed off from the present Rue de l’Ecole de Médecine by a columnar screen. It was this feature that made a great impression on Gondoin’s contemporaries, lacking as it does the usual inflections by projecting end pavilions and central ...

[P’yetro di Gonzaga]

(b Longarone, nr Venice, March 25, 1751; d St Petersburg, Aug 6, 1831).

Italian painter, stage designer and landscape designer, also active in Russia. He studied in Venice (1769–72) under Giuseppe Moretti and Antonio Visentini (1688–1782) and finished his education in Milan (1772–8), studying with the stage designers Bernardino, Fabrizio and Giovanni Antonio Galliari. He was considerably influenced by the works of Canaletto and Piranesi. He made his début as a stage designer in Milan at the Teatro alla Scala in 1779 and designed over 60 productions in Milan, Rome, Genoa and other Italian cities. From 1792 he worked in Russia, where he went on the recommendation of Prince Nikolay Yusupov, who was at that time the chief director of music and pageantry at the court of Catherine II.

In his stage designs Gonzago put into effect his theoretical principles, which he explained in the handbook Information à mon chef ou éclaircissement convenable du décorateur théâtral (St Petersburg, ...

[de Grey]

English family of architects, patrons and collectors. Principally noted for their interest in garden design and architecture as represented in the family estate at Wrest Park, Beds, many generations of the family were active as statesmen and parliamentarians. Among the important works of art once owned by the family are Claude Lorrain’s Coast View of the Embarkation of Carlo and Ubaldo (Toronto, A. G. Ont.) and Anthony van Dyck’s portrait of the Balbi Children (London, N.G.). In 1676 Anthony, 11th Earl Grey (b 1645; d 19 Aug 1702), designed and built a new north front for the Elizabethan house at Wrest; during the late 1680s he began making Baroque formal gardens to the south of it. His son, Henry Grey, 12th Earl of Kent (b 1671; d 5 June 1740), whose Grand Tour in 1690–91 had included a visit to Rome, inherited the estate on his father’s death and resumed work on the gardens in ...

(b Venice, May 14, 1783; d Venice, May 8, 1852).

Italian architect, engineer and landscape designer. He was a prominent Neo-classical architect but was also a noted eclectic, much admired, for example, by Pietro Selvatico, and he introduced the taste for the romantic garden to Italy. He attended courses in architecture and figure drawing at the Accademia Clementina, Bologna (1789–9). This school, which was in the forefront of theatre design and technique, provided a stimulating and enlightened cultural environment; his teachers included Angelo Venturoli (1749–1821) and Francesco Tadolini (1723–1805). After obtaining his diploma in 1800, he moved to Padua, and in 1803 he entered the studio of Giovanni Valle, a mapmaker, where he became a qualified surveyor. He collaborated with the engineer Paolo Artico between 1804 and 1806 on defence works on the River Piave, and in 1807, with the architect Daniele Danieletti (1756–1822), he restored the old prison in Carrara Castle. The same year he was also appointed as an engineer in the Regio Corpo di Acque e Strade in the Brenta region. His works of this period included decorating the town hall (...

(b Kassel, Dec 9, 1754; d Kassel, July 26, 1825).

German architect. He studied architecture from 1778 at the Collegium Carolinum in Kassel under Simon Louis Du Ry. His earliest surviving designs show a close allegiance to the architecture of the Prussian court in Berlin and Potsdam. At about this time he taught architecture under Du Ry. In 1783 Jussow received a bursary from Landgrave Frederick II of Hesse-Kassel (reg 1760–85), which enabled him to stay in Paris until 1785. There he was a pupil of Charles de Wailly, who had produced various designs for a new residential palace and a pleasure palace, both at Weissenstein (later Wilhelmshöhe), for the Kassel court. In de Wailly’s studio Jussow drew up his first scheme for Schloss Wilhelmshöhe, which exhibits the direct influence of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who was also working on projects for Landgrave Frederick at the time. Jussow also spent a year in Italy (1785–6) and was one of the first German architects to study and draw the ancient temples at Paestum. Landgrave ...

(b Bridlington, bapt Jan 1, 1685; d London, April 12, 1748).

English architect, painter, landscape gardener and designer. He was the most exuberant and innovative architect and designer active in England in the first half of the 18th century. He was trained as a painter but was not particularly successful or remarkable in this work, showing greater skill as a draughtsman. As an architect he was highly versatile, practising in both the Palladian and Gothick styles, and this versatility extended to his work as a designer, which included interior decoration, furniture and silverware, book illustration, stage sets and gardens.

Kent was born into a poor family in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Nothing is known of his early education, nor of the circumstances that led to his apprenticeship to a coach-painter in Hull at about the age of 15. Kent is first recorded in London in 1709, when he applied for a passport to go to Italy. He was then 24 and, according to ...

Botanic gardens situated on the banks of the River Thames at Kew, 12 km west of London. The gardens extend to 121 ha and combine the roles of a major scientific institution and a popular park. The nucleus of the present Kew Gardens was formed from the grounds of the White House (1730–35; destr. 1802), residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta, and the adjacent grounds of Richmond Lodge (destr. 1772), favourite residence of King George II and Queen Caroline.

In 1730 Frederick commissioned William Kent to renovate the White House and lay out its grounds. Augusta remained there after Frederick’s death (1751), and, under the guidance of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, established a small botanical garden (1759). The remaining grounds were embellished by William Chambers with buildings (1757–63) in various exotic styles, of which several survive, including the Pagoda (...

(fl Vienna, 1835–c. 1871).

Austrian furniture-maker. In 1835 he founded a metal-furniture factory in Vienna; its products extended from garden and park furniture to drawing-room furniture and ornamental figures in the Rococo Revival style. At the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Kitschelt, along with Michael Thonet and Carl Leistler, represented the Vienna furniture industry, showing seats, tables and ornamental vases with floral decoration. At the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris Kitschelt showed a four-poster bed and a suite designed by the architect Josef von Storck. In 1871 Kitschelt exhibited leather-upholstered seats in classical forms, designed by Rudolf Bernt (1844–1914), at the Österreichisches Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna. Thereafter Kitschelt’s successors concentrated on the production of utility furniture made of tubular steel or moulded metal, portable furniture, tubular steel beds, ladders and garden tents.