Origins of the Picturesque

“Picturesque” carries a range of meanings across all modes of human expressions. From arduous agriculture to pleasurable hunting, the earliest human-made landscapes formed 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.

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

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 a style whose power and relevance has not as yet peaked.