DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16633#0339
The English Landscape Garden
319
Neisse valley, with its border of mountains that enclose the pleasant bath-buildings,
into a great park.
Quite at the beginning the prince commissioned the artist Schirmer to paint him some
landscapes of the park as he saw it in his own mind, and these pictures he used afterwards
as patterns. He had a predecessor here, for Count Girardin, Rousseau's friend, had had
Ermenonville laid out from pictures which he had ordered. Puckler, with a view to
getting rid of the wretchedly bare look of a young plantation, transplanted large trees
in their own earth, and this turned out a great success. And yet the gardeners tell
you that the park has only to-day achieved the beauty of the inspired picture which
FIG. 604. HOUSE IN A MEADOW AT KEW
the prince put before the painter's mind. The importance of the scenes which one sees
in a long series in ever-changing groups in an hour's walk, lies mainly in the arrangement
of individual trees, which Puckler especially loved, groups of beeches and a border of
forest trees, with meadow ground and water. It is most surprising how variety can be
gained by the help of colour and light, "which ever leaves something for Fancy to guess."
Puckler does not despise the aid that buildings lend; besides the castle, and the
towers of the little town, he has two temples, a vaulted church, a ruined tower, and some
country houses farther off; but these are only meant to enliven the picture, not to force
on any particular mood. In the whole scheme, sentimentality is banished; even the
inscriptions from Goethe in the park at Weimar Puckler prefers to read from the
master's books.
The passion for ruins now took on an historical character; it was no longer excited by
the thought of the transitoriness of life, but by the recollection of some actual or imagined
incident. "A garden on a grand scale is a picture gallery, and a picture must have a frame."
II—Y
319
Neisse valley, with its border of mountains that enclose the pleasant bath-buildings,
into a great park.
Quite at the beginning the prince commissioned the artist Schirmer to paint him some
landscapes of the park as he saw it in his own mind, and these pictures he used afterwards
as patterns. He had a predecessor here, for Count Girardin, Rousseau's friend, had had
Ermenonville laid out from pictures which he had ordered. Puckler, with a view to
getting rid of the wretchedly bare look of a young plantation, transplanted large trees
in their own earth, and this turned out a great success. And yet the gardeners tell
you that the park has only to-day achieved the beauty of the inspired picture which
FIG. 604. HOUSE IN A MEADOW AT KEW
the prince put before the painter's mind. The importance of the scenes which one sees
in a long series in ever-changing groups in an hour's walk, lies mainly in the arrangement
of individual trees, which Puckler especially loved, groups of beeches and a border of
forest trees, with meadow ground and water. It is most surprising how variety can be
gained by the help of colour and light, "which ever leaves something for Fancy to guess."
Puckler does not despise the aid that buildings lend; besides the castle, and the
towers of the little town, he has two temples, a vaulted church, a ruined tower, and some
country houses farther off; but these are only meant to enliven the picture, not to force
on any particular mood. In the whole scheme, sentimentality is banished; even the
inscriptions from Goethe in the park at Weimar Puckler prefers to read from the
master's books.
The passion for ruins now took on an historical character; it was no longer excited by
the thought of the transitoriness of life, but by the recollection of some actual or imagined
incident. "A garden on a grand scale is a picture gallery, and a picture must have a frame."
II—Y