The picturesque and landscape appreciation the development of tourism in the Yorkshire dales & county durham 1750- 1860

Abstract

The Picturesque is a particular way of appreciating landscape, with its beginnings in the Grand Tour of the eighteenth century. Its development in Britain is traced through the associated arts of literature, landscape gardening and especially painting. The Picturesque later developed into a more Romantic view of Nature, before a more scientific or geological study of landscape predominated by the middle of the nineteenth century. In Britain, the Lake District, Wales and Scotland attracted most picturesque attention. The focus here is on the Yorkshire Dales and County Durham. The main features of 8 case studies are identified. The development of interest in each site is traced, with an analysis of the choice of detail and viewpoints chosen, by artists and writers. The extent of distortion and plagiarism is discussed. Artists visiting the Yorkshire Dales and County Durham, often depending on local patronage, helped to promote the Picturesque Tour, as did the published Tours of travellers who were either wealthy or had the leisure to travel- clergy or lawyers. Visitors were attracted by published engravings, poems, novels and Tours; roads and maps were improved. The routes followed by the major visitors, with the waterfalls, gorges and caves they sought out, are analysed on maps of the region. A general picturesque perception outweighs the individualistic interest of the varied visitors. This perception is evident in the artists’ choice of viewpoint, in the use made of foregrounds, in the use of exaggeration, and in the contrasts between beauty and horror. Written descriptions may be composed in terms of a painting, convey a sense of difficulty and even peril; the revelation of the culminating view is often delayed. Imagery of beauty and horror, with noise, is conveyed with Sublime terms of terror, gloom and savagery. There are often references to the Italian paintings and early British 'nature' poetry.