Welsh gardens in art to c. 1850

Abstract

The theme ‘Gardens in art’ has been lavishly treated in numerous illustrated books published in recent years. Reproductions of artists’ views of gardens have figured extensively in more than one exhibition, notably ‘The garden: a celebration of one thousand years of British gardening’ at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1979¹ and ‘The Anglo-Dutch garden’ at Christie’s in London in 1989 (first shown in The Netherlands in 1988),² There has, however, been no systematic attempt to investigate how far gardens in Wales have attracted the attention of artists, though two or three well-known examples are regularly mentioned in works on the subject. Indeed, one could go further and say little has been written at all about the garden history of Wales.