Bourgeois and aristocratic cultural encounters in garden art, 1550-1850
By: edited by Michel Conan.
Contributors: Conan, Michel.; Dumbarton Oaks.
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Washington, D.C
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
Subjects: Gardens -- Europe, Western -- History -- Congresses.; Gardens -- Europe, Western -- Design -- History -- Congresses.; Gardens -- Social aspects -- Europe, Western -- History -- Congresses.; Middle class -- Europe, Western -- Social life and customs -- History -- Congresses.; Aristocracy (Social class) -- Europe, Western -- Social life and customs -- History -- Congresses.
Genres: Congresses.
Description: Developments in garden art cannot be isolated from the social changes upon which they either depend or have some bearing. Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art, 1550 - 1850 offers an unparalleled opportunity to discover how complex relationships between bourgeois and aristocrats have led to developments in garden art from the Renaissance into the Industrial Revolution, irrespective of stylistic differences. These essays show how garden creation has contributed to the blurring of social boundaries and to the ongoing redefinition of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. Also illustrated is the aggressive use of gardens by bourgeois in more-or-less successful attempts at subverting existing social hierarchies in renaissance Genoa and eighteenth-century Bristol, England; as well as the opposite, as demonstrated by the king of France, Louis XIV, who claimed to rule the arts, but imitated the curieux fleuristes, a group of amateurs from diverse strata of French society. Essays in this volume explore this complex framework of relationships in diverse settings in Britain, France, Biedermeier Vienna, and renaissance Genoa. The volume confirms that gardens were objects of conspicuous consumption, but also challenges the theories of consumption set forth by Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu, and explores the contributions of gardens to major cultural changes like the rise of public opinion, gender and family relationships, and capitalism. Garden history, then, informs many of the debates of contemporary cultural history, ranging from rural management practices in early seventeenth-century France to the development of a sense of British pride at the expansive Vauxhall Gardens favored equally by the legendary Frederick, Prince of Wales, and by the teeming London masses. This volume amply demonstrates the varied and extensive contributions of garden creation to cultural exchange between 1550 and 1850. -- Publisher's description.
Notes: "Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture XXIII"--P. [i]

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: Gardens into Cultural Change, 1550-1850 1; title: Michel Conan; title: Mique, the Architect of Royal Intimacy 25; title: Patrice Higonnet; title: Social Class and Consumption; title: The Rise and Fall of Gardens in the Republic of Genoa, 1528-1797 43; title: Lauro Magnani; title: Flowers of Distinction: Taste, Class, and Floriculture 77; title: in Seventeenth-Century France; title: Elizabeth Hyde; title: Pavilions, Power, and Patriotism: Garden Architecture at Vauxhall 101; title: Gregory Nosan; title: The Prospect of Trade: The Merchant Gardeners of Bristol 123; title: in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century; title: David Lambert; title: La Pens6e Bourgeoisie in the Biedermeier Garden 147; title: Robert Rotenberg; title: Bourgeois Cultures into Garden Art; title: Bourgeois Culture and French Gardening in the Sixteenth 173; title: and Seventeenth Centuries; title: Chandra Mukerji; title: Commercial Profit and Cultural Display in the Eighteenth-Century 189; title: Landscape Gardens at Wentworth Woodhouse and Harewood; title: Patrick Eyres; title: The Culture of Horticulture: Class, Consumption, and Gender 221; title: in the English Landscape Garden; title: Mark Laird; title: Joseph Paxton's Water Lily 255; title: Margaret Flanders Darby; title: Gardens, Gender, and Public Spaces; title: Sexuality and Politics in the Gardens at West Wycombe 285; title: and Medmenham Abbey; title: Wendy Frith; title: Gothic Gallantry: Humphry Repton, Lord Byron, 311; title: and the Sexual Politics of Landscape Gardening; title: Stephen Daniels; title: Women, Gardens, and the English Middle Class 337; title: in the Early Nineteenth Century; title: Heath Schenker; title: Contributors 361; title: Indexes 365.