Just who was this William Gilpin fellow?
If you have your copy of The Brantford Wagers in your hand, or are viewing onscreen on your device, or if you have been browsing online previews of the first few chapters, you will see that each chapter of The Brantford Wagers opens with a quote from William Gilpin, taken from *William Gilpin’s An Essay Upon Prints, Containing Remarks upon the Principles of Picturesque Beauty. This interesting essay, first published in 1768 in London by J. Robson, can be viewed online or you can order a paperback edition (see below).
Willliam Gilpin was an eighteenth-century school teacher, vicar, artist, and author, known in particular for his travel writing and his articulation of the picturesque through a series of essays on painting.
“The picturesque is an aesthetic category,” notes a writer with the United Kingdom’s National Trust Organization, “developed in the eighteenth-century to describe, in the words of artist and author William Gilpin (1724 – 1804), ‘that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’. It was associated with fashionable landscape gardening, however its cultural significance extended far beyond this.”
And what do William Gilpin and An Essay Upon Prints, along with other works of his, have to do with Regency historical fiction? Well, quite a lot, actually, if you are a reader of Jane Austen’s works.
In my own case, my use of the quotes is in part related to the underlying references in the Austen novels, and also to the comical parallels that can be drawn from the art of painting and etching in a picturesque manner to the art of writing a novel and, especially, a novel of a specific genre. As I explored Gilpin’s essay, I found it entertaining to align his remarks in the essay to the structure and technique of writing.
Take this example of my selected quote introducing Chapter 7 in The Brantford Wagers:
“With regard to characters,” writes Gilpin in Chapter 1 of his essay, “the painter must suit them to his piece by attending to historical truth, if his subject be history; or to heathen mythology, if it be fabulous. [I then pick up the quote from the next sentence referring to two of the main characters meeting one another…] “He must farther introduce them properly.”
The exercise of selecting quotes took on a bit of life of its own over the course of the writing period, and I had tremendous fun playing around with text for my various chapter introductions.
For those who are not familiar with Gilpin’s writings, you can, with a bit of digging, find out about the direct and indirect references found in Jane Austen’s work stemming from her reading of, understanding and enjoyment from, and no doubt entertaining conversations with others involving the works of William Gilpin. Jane Austen was highly familiar with the writings of this gentleman. Her brother, Henry Austen, noted that Jane was “enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque at a very early age” (as stated in his biographical note to the posthumously published first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) and was well versed on the growing and overly enthusiastic trend of travellers to use a convex Claude glass to assess the picturesque aspects of a landscape with the eyes of a painter. (There is a great write-up on atlasobscura.com about the over-use of Claude glasses by tourists travelling in their own country in the early 19th century.)
Jane Austen was simultaneously informed and educated by Gilpin’s works while also being highly entertained and amused by many of his perspectives, and perhaps more so, by the public’s literal application of his concepts. She enjoyed making allusions to certain amusing notions from Gilpin’s principles for interpreting all that was picturesque when applied not only to paintings and prints but to the natural beauty of the world around them.
And while some of Gilpin’s remarks are construed as amusing both in the period he wrote and in the modern perspective, recall that these writings were also influential. His essays were penned during a time when travel from the United Kingdom to the continent was restricted as a result of the French and the English wars stretching over two decades. The discovery of all that was picturesque in the home country made a lesser “grand tour” possible for those below the level of aristocracy, and gave rise to domestic tourism, notably to the Lake District. Recall, too, that Jane Austen, while likely laughing out loud at some aspects of Gilpin’s description of the picturesque, also relied on Gilpin’s travel guides for imagery and geographic descriptions of local landscapes.
Recall as well that, as the Enlightenment period drew to a close in the 18th century and shifted into Romanticism, picturesque landscape paintings were gaining in popularity. The great writers of the day were embracing a new sense of humanity, while the renowned landscape gardeners of the era were embracing and “improving” the designed landscape through a new understanding of and focus on natural beauty, wilderness, and picturesque landscapes. These conversations neither started nor ended with William Gilpin, but his voice, sometimes delightfully ridiculous to his peers and to the modern ear while also offering highly learned and insightful observations, adds depth to our understanding of Georgian and Regency society in the Romantic period.
For those wanting to learn about Gilpin’s influence and how he was viewed in his own time, I have provided a few links below. These articles highlight some of Gilpin’s teachings and illustrate Jane Austen’s masterful ability to merge the sensible and the ridiculous together in her writing.
One particularly funny indication of Jane Austen’s familiarity with Gilpin is found in Pride and Prejudice (an excerpt from Chapter 10 is shown in italics below). While the protagonists are gathered at the home of Mr. Bingley, Mr. Darcy has been walking along a path outside with the jealous Miss Bingley, who has been mocking Darcy’s appreciation for fine eyes. On being approached by Mrs. Hurst and Elizabeth Bennet, Mrs. Hurst abandons Elizabeth and steps towards her sister and Mr Darcy.
Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Darcy, she left Elizabeth to walk by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Darcy felt their rudeness and immediately said, ‘This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the avenue.’
But Elizabeth, who had not the least inclination to remain with them, laughingly answered, ‘No no; stay where you are. You are charmingly group’d, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good bye.’ She then ran gaily off…
In the book Introduction to Art by Muffet Jones , in Chapter 30 of the Art History Timelines, “Romanticism,” the author writes: As several critics have noted, the “subtext” here is Gilpin’s appendix on his prints, where he explains in technical jargon that there are problems in “forming two into a group,” while “four introduce a new difficulty in grouping.” But with three you “are almost sure of a good group.” Elizabeth shows herself to be a good student of Gilpin, like her creator; but the cause for her gay laugh is the little joke she shares with those of us who have read Gilpin, since what Gilpin is actually talking about is “the doctrine of grouping larger cattle.”
My hope is that you enjoy the selection of William Gilpin’s quotes used in The Brantford Wagers. Perhaps this will pique your interest in further exploring the works of Gilpin, contribute to an awareness of Jane Austen’s familiarity with his viewpoints, highlight her own sense of humour evident in her books, and contribute to awareness of the heightened interest in the picturesque domestic landscape that arose, in large part with thanks to Gilpin, during this “romantic” period of history.
And perhaps, like me, you will even find some entertainment, from time to time, in comparing and applying Gilpin’s notions of the techniques to achieve the picturesque in painting and prints to the art of writing.
As Gilpin prescribes to his audience on page 7 in Chapter 1 of An Essay Upon Prints, “When all the rules are observed, when a proper point of time is chosen; when characters corresponding with the subject are introduced, and these ordered so judiciously as to point out the story in the strongest manner; and lastly, when all the appendages, and under-parts of the piece are suitable, and subservient to the subject, then the story is well told, and of course the design is perfect.”
Opening quotations for each chapter in my book are excerpts from the following work:
*Gilpin, William. An Essay upon Prints: Containing Remarks upon the Principles of Picturesque Beauty (London: Printed for J. Robson, 1768 (Bookseller to the Princess Dowager of Wales, at the Feathers, in New Bond Street. M DCC LXVIII). Text is accessible to the public through the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) Text Creation Partnership (TCP) (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/ecco/004859666.0001.000); last accessed October 27, 2021. Quotes are drawn from William Gilpin’s Explanation of Terms, pp. i-iv, and from Chapter 1, pp. 1-44. Printed copies of this essay are available through Cambridge Library Collection, Cambridge University Press.
Here are just a few of many interesting online articles and blog posts, in no set order, that you might find enjoyable in exploring this topic on your own:
I have just learnt to love a hyacinth”: Jane Austen’s heroines in their novelistic landscape go.gale.com
The picturesque in Pride and Prejudice A.Walton Litz, Jane Austen Society of North America
William Gilpin, Jane Austen, and the picturesque whisperinggums.com
Dirt Lane or Picturesque Scene? Sense and Sensibility janeaustensworld.com
Pride and Prejudice without Zombies’: “Enamoured of the Picturesque at a Very Early Age: William Gilpin and Jane Austen austenprose.com
Him Who First Described What Picturesque Beauty Was: Jane Austen and William Gilpin Book Talk
Enamoured of the picturesque at a very early age: William Gilpin and Jane Austen Austen Only
Austen and the Picturesque Four posts on Old Grey Pony
William Gilpin Publishes an Essay on Prints and the Picturesque Digital Austen
Gilpin on the Picturesque (1): Picturesque Beauty Siris
William Gilpin and the Picturesque Landscape Design
The 18th-Century Phenomenon of Putting a Filter on a Sunset for Likes atlasobscura.com
What is the picturesque? National Trust Org. Austen and The Picturesque
