DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16633#0330
History of Garden Art
the Great was inspired to write him an admiring letter in verse. The fancy of the time for
masquerading both in outward and inward ways—which we must always remember had
nothing whatever to do with the new style of horticulture or its real principles—seemed
at times to tend to such an exuberant growth that one could not recognise its original
intention.
While Count Hoditz sinned in his senseless conglomeration of disconnected scenes,
a famous garden at Hohenheim, a couple of hours from Stuttgart, was going astray in
quite another fashion. Here one idea only dominated the whole place. The designer's
intention was to represent a colony settling on the ruins of a Roman town (Fig. 600) and
the effect was hailed with admiration by his contemporaries.
We take a lively interest in these dwelling-places, and believe them inhabited; we are astonished
at the remains of temples and strong walls, which stand exactly as though they had been rescued
from destruction hundreds of years ago. . . Anyone just passing through the garden and looking at
it can get no clear impression, because of the number of buildings; but it is quite different for a person
who enjoys choosing some particular part, and staying awhile where he finds the right nourishment for
his mood ... he soon comes to a spot for the dolce far niente, then to another which, because it bears
the stamp of simple benevolence, has the power of pouring blessed peace into his soul.
But even now we have not had enough deception! We go into an apparently
simple hut, and meet the last surprise; for inside it are wonderful rooms furnished m
princely fashion, bath-rooms, silk tapestries, paintings, and so forth. The Prince de Ligne
counts sixty different views in the comparatively small space of sixty to seventy acres,
which can be strolled round in four or five hours.
It is not surprising perhaps that the lively, fashion-loving prince—a man for whom
the dernier cri was the topmost peak of civilisation—took delight in this garden. In the
park of his family place at Hennegau in Belgium, he laid out a Tartar village, where all
the aboriginal character of the shepherd's life was staged, with young bulls as well as young
students at the dairy. When work was over, the shepherds played on instruments which
the prince had brought away from the Alps with his cows, and wore a uniform worthy of
the beauty and simplicity of Nature, whose high priests they were. In this Tartar village
the dairies are concealed in the mosque, whose minarets serve well as dovecots.
And other men of more weight than the Prince de Ligne yielded to the charm of the
"idea of uniformity" as shown at the Hohenheim Park farm. It even finds favour in
the eyes of Schiller, who gives his opinions on the garden in the Pocket Calendar for 1795.
Though he severely condemns the overcrowding of scenes into the gardens of the day,
"where the whole number of her [Nature's] charms are displayed as in a book of patterns,"
and though he considers it a mistake when horticulture takes painting as a model,
because it has "no reduced scale," he still hails with joy the idea of this kind of garden.
Although he thinks it an affected sentimentality to hang little tablets with mottoes on
the trees, he gains a point by urging that the Nature which we find in the English garden
is no longer the same Nature as the one we have left outside. It is a Nature enlivened with
a soul, a Nature exalted by art, which delights not only the simple man, but the man
of education and culture: the one she teaches to think, the other to feel.
Schiller had always had a certain local interest in the garden of his own father's house;
but all this talk points to a general mistrust of the new art. There was a strong feeling
that in this particular department, where Nature must and ought to provide the material
to be copied, it was impossible to attain an artistic style from a simple imitation of her.
the Great was inspired to write him an admiring letter in verse. The fancy of the time for
masquerading both in outward and inward ways—which we must always remember had
nothing whatever to do with the new style of horticulture or its real principles—seemed
at times to tend to such an exuberant growth that one could not recognise its original
intention.
While Count Hoditz sinned in his senseless conglomeration of disconnected scenes,
a famous garden at Hohenheim, a couple of hours from Stuttgart, was going astray in
quite another fashion. Here one idea only dominated the whole place. The designer's
intention was to represent a colony settling on the ruins of a Roman town (Fig. 600) and
the effect was hailed with admiration by his contemporaries.
We take a lively interest in these dwelling-places, and believe them inhabited; we are astonished
at the remains of temples and strong walls, which stand exactly as though they had been rescued
from destruction hundreds of years ago. . . Anyone just passing through the garden and looking at
it can get no clear impression, because of the number of buildings; but it is quite different for a person
who enjoys choosing some particular part, and staying awhile where he finds the right nourishment for
his mood ... he soon comes to a spot for the dolce far niente, then to another which, because it bears
the stamp of simple benevolence, has the power of pouring blessed peace into his soul.
But even now we have not had enough deception! We go into an apparently
simple hut, and meet the last surprise; for inside it are wonderful rooms furnished m
princely fashion, bath-rooms, silk tapestries, paintings, and so forth. The Prince de Ligne
counts sixty different views in the comparatively small space of sixty to seventy acres,
which can be strolled round in four or five hours.
It is not surprising perhaps that the lively, fashion-loving prince—a man for whom
the dernier cri was the topmost peak of civilisation—took delight in this garden. In the
park of his family place at Hennegau in Belgium, he laid out a Tartar village, where all
the aboriginal character of the shepherd's life was staged, with young bulls as well as young
students at the dairy. When work was over, the shepherds played on instruments which
the prince had brought away from the Alps with his cows, and wore a uniform worthy of
the beauty and simplicity of Nature, whose high priests they were. In this Tartar village
the dairies are concealed in the mosque, whose minarets serve well as dovecots.
And other men of more weight than the Prince de Ligne yielded to the charm of the
"idea of uniformity" as shown at the Hohenheim Park farm. It even finds favour in
the eyes of Schiller, who gives his opinions on the garden in the Pocket Calendar for 1795.
Though he severely condemns the overcrowding of scenes into the gardens of the day,
"where the whole number of her [Nature's] charms are displayed as in a book of patterns,"
and though he considers it a mistake when horticulture takes painting as a model,
because it has "no reduced scale," he still hails with joy the idea of this kind of garden.
Although he thinks it an affected sentimentality to hang little tablets with mottoes on
the trees, he gains a point by urging that the Nature which we find in the English garden
is no longer the same Nature as the one we have left outside. It is a Nature enlivened with
a soul, a Nature exalted by art, which delights not only the simple man, but the man
of education and culture: the one she teaches to think, the other to feel.
Schiller had always had a certain local interest in the garden of his own father's house;
but all this talk points to a general mistrust of the new art. There was a strong feeling
that in this particular department, where Nature must and ought to provide the material
to be copied, it was impossible to attain an artistic style from a simple imitation of her.