Origins of the Picturesque

The picturesque carries a range of meanings across all modes of human expressions. From arduous agriculture to pleasurable hunting, the earliest human-made landscapes formed its aesthetic and functional origins that inspired poets, painters, and landscape designers. As an aesthetic movement it culminated in the English landscape garden, representing a manicured conception of nature that has had a lasting impact on Western cultures.

This book traces understandings and conceptions of nature and how these subsequently gave rise to culturally distinct formations of landscapes and architectures. Essays by distinguished authors from China, Europe, and the Americas impressively reveal that the picturesque as an ordering sensibility that can be found throughout the ages in numerous civilisations from Andean, African, Asian and European regions.

Origins of the Picturesque is a unique volume that brings together etymologists, archaeologists, architects, and landscape design historians and opens a view of the rich history of an idea, whose power and relevance has not as yet peaked.