Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art and Landscape Design
When you finish the book, you have come full circle. You have seen how the Romantic Movement began and how its expression in the garden provided, and still provides, a sense of oneness with nature. You feel how good it is to enjoy a garden. --Home & GardenThis large-format, deluxe volume accompanies a recent exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. Cocurator Rogers contributes a feature essay introducing Romanticism as it developed in Europe and America during the 18th and 19th centuries and further discusses the movement's influence on landscape design. Garden planners attempted to capture the power and beauty of nature, while imparting moral lessons or producing sensual pleasure. This ethos has informed many public parks, gardens, and cemeteries. The Morgan exhibit includes diverse documents and visual art, reproduced here in color, with descriptions by Elizabeth Eustis (Boston Architectural Coll.) and John Bidwell (Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, Morgan Library). An example is a lithograph of Balcony Bridge in Central Park, designed by architect Calvert Vaux around 1860. This valuable work on the history of landscape design in Western culture will be of most interest to landscape architects, art historians, and students. --Library JournalThis is possibly one of the most beautiful books ever published on garden history. --Judith B. Tankard, Massachusetts Horticultural Society