From artistic imitation to an esthetics of sensibility: landscape gardeningaccording to Andrew Jackson Downing

摘要

In an article published a few years ago,1 I examined the contradictions that run through the three editions of A Treatise on The Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening published in the USA by Andrew Jackson Downing between 1841 and 1849, in whichhe adapts the English tradition of Landscape Gardening to North America.2 I attributed those contradictions to the fact that Downing grounds his theoretical proposal in the doctrine of artistic imitation, even though the two are emphatically incompatible. In this article, I would like to pursue that analysis to its conclusion. I intend to demonstrate the following:The emphasis on imitation is merely a subterfuge that conveniently allows Downing to put forward the idea that Landscape Gardening is a branch of the Fine Arts.Downing distorts the meaning of imitation in order to graft on the Picturesque, an esthetic category that is clearly incongruous with it.This manoeuvre is rife with contortions, but it is indispensable, because it is only by championing the Picturesque that Downing manages to 'naturalize' Landscape Gardening to America.In so doing, Downing completely deviates from the neo-Classical artistic line and takes a Romantic stance with regard to Beauty, namely, that it stems not from representation but from the realm of emotion.