Landscape with Hills and a Lake

William Gilpin

ca. 1772 · Pen and black ink, brush and gray wash, on buff paper · Drawings and Prints

Gilpin's ideas concering the picturesque are here demonstrated using monochrome ink washes. While working as the enlightened head of a boys's school, then vicar at Boldre in the New Forest from 1777, Gilpin wrote essays that defined this new aesthetic concept associated with pleasingly irregular forms situated between beauty and sublimity. During summer tours, Gilpin visited Wales, the Scottish Highlands and other remote corners of the Britain to seek picturesque sites, and his subsequent travelogues encouraged Britons to do likewise. When continental travel was restricted by two decades of war with France, a new form of tourism emerged centered on pleasing vistas rather than famous landmarks.

Artist

William Gilpin

Date

ca. 1772

Medium

Pen and black ink, brush and gray wash, on buff paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, and Jeffrey L. Berenson Gift, 2012