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British Landscape painting
407
REVIEWS
seminal article is furnished by W. Nicholaisen who traces the influence of the work of P. W. Joyce on the development of place-name studies in Scotland within the last century. Other authors’ interests range from a study of the endowment from Celtic speaking peoples to nomenclature on the Faroe Islands by Ch. Matras to an article by B. Helleland on the culture history of a fjord community as adduced from its placenames. This latter chapter appears to be awkwardly translated from Norwegian. Generic names are confused with place-names and the results are not placed in a meaningful, chronological or spatial framework. A problem of a different kind is encountered in E. Searys’ article, ‘A short survey of placenames in Newfoundland’. The author successfully indicates the diversity of nomenclatural heritage bequeathed by indigenous and intrusive naming peoples but he stops short of a consideration of whether changing temporal inter-ethnic relationships can be deduced from a spatial analysis of place-name incidence. The fact that the length of the articles range from short notes to standard length articles gives the book an uneven appearance. The editing and proof reading are far from perfect. There are numerous inconsistencies in the punctuation, an erratic use of diacritical marks and the typeface is sometimes uneven. Regrettably the photographs are poorly reproduced and only one article has an English summary. While the contributions in fields outside geography may be important, this book is of limited value to geographers interested in place-name studies. T. P. O’FLANAGAN University College, Cork MICHAEL ROSENTHAL, British Landscape Painting
(Oxford:
Phaidon,
1982. Pp. 191.
f 15-00) More than thirty years after the appearance of Francis Klingender’s eye-opening Art and the Industrial Revolution (1947) and Kenneth Clark’s illuminating Landscape into Art (1949) and a decade after John Berger revolutionized Ways of Seeing (1972), art historians, literary scholars and geographers have embarked upon fresh explorations in the interdisciplinary voids between their widely separated fields of study. In The Experience of Landscape (1975) Jay Appleton asks what ideal qualities painters have perceived in the environments they have depicted. In The Dark Side of the Landscape (1980) John Barrel1 relates changes in the contents and composition of paintings to major turning points in social and economic history. English eighteenth-century landscape paintings celebrated the ascendancy of Whig landowners, translating English rural scenes into classical visions of Arcadia, in which figures representing the labouring poor were cast into obscurity. In Literary Landscape (1982) Ronald Paulson exposes a tension in the landscape imagery of both Constable and Turner. On the one hand, both painters strove to uphold a classical literary tradition whilst, on the other hand, they expressed radically new and essentially private sensations about dreamworlds in which their romantic imaginations could identify with rain, sun, foliage and rocks. These new geographicaf, literary and historical explorations have discovered fresh meanings in landscape art. Michael Rosenthal, an art historian at Warwick University, views the rise and decline of British landscape painting in a broad historical perspective, considering pictures as expressions of “ways in which people have reacted to the countryside” (p. 9) at different periods. Even at times when they were most widely appreciated, landscape paintings did not reflect attitudes of all British people to all environments. Artists were selective in treatment of subject matter and deferential to the wishes of their patrons. Many landscapes were fashionable portraits of parks and pleasure grounds commissioned by proud possessors; others romanticized unspoiled tracts of wilderness. Few paintings present true likenesses of common or garden scenes and this survey specifically excludes townscapes. The book asserts that landscape painting in Britain enjoyed a vogue for less than 200 years from the Restoration of Charles II to the accession of Queen Victoria. While few readers will dissent from Rosenthal’s verdict that “landscape has little part to play” (p.
40X
KEVIEWS
173) in generating new artistic ideas after 1837. landscape paintings were never larger. louder, more popularly admired nor more numerous than in Royal Academy summer exhibitions during Victorian and Edwardian times. The works of a dozen artists serve to illustrate the vast output of nineteenth-century studios. My own selection would have included representatives from among the Wealden, East Anglian and Hertfordshire painters and I should also have found places for Eric Ravillious and Edward Bawdcn among twentieth-century landscape painters. The sacrifice of additional examples may be justified by the fuller treatment given to those selected. Indeed, I should have welcomed yet more details and further references to the critical apparatus behind opinions offered. But, above all, this is a handsome collection of pictures, superbly reproduced in 178 fine colour and outstandingly clear black and white plates. The illustrations have been chosen and arranged with such consummate skill that almost any verbal description seems out of place. Univer.sit_v College Londorl
HUGH PRINCE
T. R. SLATER and P. J. JARVIS (Eds), Field and Forest: An Historical Gwgraph>, of Waru~ickshirr and Worwstershirr (Norwich: Geo Books, 1982. Pp. ix + 396. &I 3.50) Readers should not be put off this book by its unappealing format. Though not a systematic geography of the West Midlands, it is based on impressive research and forms a fitting tribute to the diverse interests of the late Professor Harry Thorpe, which are agreeably summarized in a prefatory chapter by T. R. Slater. After an uncertain start by Graham Webster, whose ‘Prehistoric settlement and land use’ is disappointingly generalized, Margaret Gelling brings us briskly up to date with a “new look” at ‘The place-name volumes for Worcestershire and Warwickshire’. In the light of recent work she revises the interpretation of many major names, inter alia laying greater emphasis on a Celtic substratum in this region than Mawer, Stenton, and Gover allowed for. In ‘The Anglo-Saxon landscape’ Della Hooke traces the extent of early woodland and the concentration of primitive English settlement in the Vale of Evesham, the foothills of the jurassic escarpment, and the valleys of the Warwickshire Avon and Stour. Though properly cautious on the problem ofcontinuity, she points out that “those regions with the most obvious potential for crop-growing continued to be exploited in the Anglo-Saxon period”. She is able to identify many links between intensively farmed estate-centres in these areas and heavily-wooded tracts of country along the watersheds, concluding a chapter notable for its attention to detail with a careful reconstruction of the estates of Worcester Cathedral. J. D. Hamshere’s ‘Computer-assisted study of Domesday Worcestershire’ is more narrowly conceived; but his finding that in woodland areas bordars consistently formed the largest element in the population interestingly substantiates Sally Harvey’s views on their association with the margin ofcolonization. Brian Roberts discusses the remarkable complexity of village-forms in Warwickshire as compared with County Durham; in seeking to relate his “composite” plans to complex manors he is on to an intriguing topic. This chapter is followed by C. J. Bond’s revisionist survey of ‘Deserted medieval villages in Warwickshire and Worcestershire’. which is particularly valuable for the latter county. Both Dr Roberts and Dr Bond venture into the but perhaps overstress the example of Chesterton. fascinating field of “polyfocalism”, whose topography may bear another interpretation. In ‘Urban genesis and medieval town plans’ T. R. Slater gives one of the finest accounts of this subject for any part of England: hc is notably perceptive on the embryonic Anglo-Saxon centres; he adds several further examples of medieval plantations to those identified by Maurice Beresford; he has many telling points to make on urban topography: and he confirms this reviewer’s feeling that the relationship of church and market at Alcester (as also at Birmingham) probably indicates trading in the churchyard before the formal establishment of the market. Most of the remaining chapters tend to be anchored to a single type of source and arc less wide-ranging. By comparing the Pope Nicholas Taxation with the Valor Ecclesiasticus
REVIEWS
seminal article is furnished by W. Nicholaisen who traces the influence of the work of P. W. Joyce on the development of place-name studies in Scotland within the last century. Other authors’ interests range from a study of the endowment from Celtic speaking peoples to nomenclature on the Faroe Islands by Ch. Matras to an article by B. Helleland on the culture history of a fjord community as adduced from its placenames. This latter chapter appears to be awkwardly translated from Norwegian. Generic names are confused with place-names and the results are not placed in a meaningful, chronological or spatial framework. A problem of a different kind is encountered in E. Searys’ article, ‘A short survey of placenames in Newfoundland’. The author successfully indicates the diversity of nomenclatural heritage bequeathed by indigenous and intrusive naming peoples but he stops short of a consideration of whether changing temporal inter-ethnic relationships can be deduced from a spatial analysis of place-name incidence. The fact that the length of the articles range from short notes to standard length articles gives the book an uneven appearance. The editing and proof reading are far from perfect. There are numerous inconsistencies in the punctuation, an erratic use of diacritical marks and the typeface is sometimes uneven. Regrettably the photographs are poorly reproduced and only one article has an English summary. While the contributions in fields outside geography may be important, this book is of limited value to geographers interested in place-name studies. T. P. O’FLANAGAN University College, Cork MICHAEL ROSENTHAL, British Landscape Painting
(Oxford:
Phaidon,
1982. Pp. 191.
f 15-00) More than thirty years after the appearance of Francis Klingender’s eye-opening Art and the Industrial Revolution (1947) and Kenneth Clark’s illuminating Landscape into Art (1949) and a decade after John Berger revolutionized Ways of Seeing (1972), art historians, literary scholars and geographers have embarked upon fresh explorations in the interdisciplinary voids between their widely separated fields of study. In The Experience of Landscape (1975) Jay Appleton asks what ideal qualities painters have perceived in the environments they have depicted. In The Dark Side of the Landscape (1980) John Barrel1 relates changes in the contents and composition of paintings to major turning points in social and economic history. English eighteenth-century landscape paintings celebrated the ascendancy of Whig landowners, translating English rural scenes into classical visions of Arcadia, in which figures representing the labouring poor were cast into obscurity. In Literary Landscape (1982) Ronald Paulson exposes a tension in the landscape imagery of both Constable and Turner. On the one hand, both painters strove to uphold a classical literary tradition whilst, on the other hand, they expressed radically new and essentially private sensations about dreamworlds in which their romantic imaginations could identify with rain, sun, foliage and rocks. These new geographicaf, literary and historical explorations have discovered fresh meanings in landscape art. Michael Rosenthal, an art historian at Warwick University, views the rise and decline of British landscape painting in a broad historical perspective, considering pictures as expressions of “ways in which people have reacted to the countryside” (p. 9) at different periods. Even at times when they were most widely appreciated, landscape paintings did not reflect attitudes of all British people to all environments. Artists were selective in treatment of subject matter and deferential to the wishes of their patrons. Many landscapes were fashionable portraits of parks and pleasure grounds commissioned by proud possessors; others romanticized unspoiled tracts of wilderness. Few paintings present true likenesses of common or garden scenes and this survey specifically excludes townscapes. The book asserts that landscape painting in Britain enjoyed a vogue for less than 200 years from the Restoration of Charles II to the accession of Queen Victoria. While few readers will dissent from Rosenthal’s verdict that “landscape has little part to play” (p.
40X
KEVIEWS
173) in generating new artistic ideas after 1837. landscape paintings were never larger. louder, more popularly admired nor more numerous than in Royal Academy summer exhibitions during Victorian and Edwardian times. The works of a dozen artists serve to illustrate the vast output of nineteenth-century studios. My own selection would have included representatives from among the Wealden, East Anglian and Hertfordshire painters and I should also have found places for Eric Ravillious and Edward Bawdcn among twentieth-century landscape painters. The sacrifice of additional examples may be justified by the fuller treatment given to those selected. Indeed, I should have welcomed yet more details and further references to the critical apparatus behind opinions offered. But, above all, this is a handsome collection of pictures, superbly reproduced in 178 fine colour and outstandingly clear black and white plates. The illustrations have been chosen and arranged with such consummate skill that almost any verbal description seems out of place. Univer.sit_v College Londorl
HUGH PRINCE
T. R. SLATER and P. J. JARVIS (Eds), Field and Forest: An Historical Gwgraph>, of Waru~ickshirr and Worwstershirr (Norwich: Geo Books, 1982. Pp. ix + 396. &I 3.50) Readers should not be put off this book by its unappealing format. Though not a systematic geography of the West Midlands, it is based on impressive research and forms a fitting tribute to the diverse interests of the late Professor Harry Thorpe, which are agreeably summarized in a prefatory chapter by T. R. Slater. After an uncertain start by Graham Webster, whose ‘Prehistoric settlement and land use’ is disappointingly generalized, Margaret Gelling brings us briskly up to date with a “new look” at ‘The place-name volumes for Worcestershire and Warwickshire’. In the light of recent work she revises the interpretation of many major names, inter alia laying greater emphasis on a Celtic substratum in this region than Mawer, Stenton, and Gover allowed for. In ‘The Anglo-Saxon landscape’ Della Hooke traces the extent of early woodland and the concentration of primitive English settlement in the Vale of Evesham, the foothills of the jurassic escarpment, and the valleys of the Warwickshire Avon and Stour. Though properly cautious on the problem ofcontinuity, she points out that “those regions with the most obvious potential for crop-growing continued to be exploited in the Anglo-Saxon period”. She is able to identify many links between intensively farmed estate-centres in these areas and heavily-wooded tracts of country along the watersheds, concluding a chapter notable for its attention to detail with a careful reconstruction of the estates of Worcester Cathedral. J. D. Hamshere’s ‘Computer-assisted study of Domesday Worcestershire’ is more narrowly conceived; but his finding that in woodland areas bordars consistently formed the largest element in the population interestingly substantiates Sally Harvey’s views on their association with the margin ofcolonization. Brian Roberts discusses the remarkable complexity of village-forms in Warwickshire as compared with County Durham; in seeking to relate his “composite” plans to complex manors he is on to an intriguing topic. This chapter is followed by C. J. Bond’s revisionist survey of ‘Deserted medieval villages in Warwickshire and Worcestershire’. which is particularly valuable for the latter county. Both Dr Roberts and Dr Bond venture into the but perhaps overstress the example of Chesterton. fascinating field of “polyfocalism”, whose topography may bear another interpretation. In ‘Urban genesis and medieval town plans’ T. R. Slater gives one of the finest accounts of this subject for any part of England: hc is notably perceptive on the embryonic Anglo-Saxon centres; he adds several further examples of medieval plantations to those identified by Maurice Beresford; he has many telling points to make on urban topography: and he confirms this reviewer’s feeling that the relationship of church and market at Alcester (as also at Birmingham) probably indicates trading in the churchyard before the formal establishment of the market. Most of the remaining chapters tend to be anchored to a single type of source and arc less wide-ranging. By comparing the Pope Nicholas Taxation with the Valor Ecclesiasticus