Fabulous New Book Launch Event hosted by the Author, Michael Symes
Meet and Greet the author on Tuesday 23 April at 11am – 12pm, hear all about the new book and you will be able to purchase a copy for a discounted price of £35.00 (RRP is £50.00)
The event will be taking place in Painshill’s function room, The Abercorn.
This is free for members and volunteers. There is also the opportunity to invite and reserve a ticket for a guest to come along free of charge. If your visitor should want to enjoy the landscape prior to or after the launch, an admission ticket would need to be purchased.
Michael Symes has written many books on the history of the landscape garden, and established the MA in Garden History at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Michael has been a historical consultant for the restoration at Painshill since 1981.
Tickets are limited, so please do book to avoid disappointment.
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Synopsis of the book:
In this book, published in January 2024, noted garden historian Michael Symes considers what prints tell us about the development of the landscape garden in 18th- and early 19th– century Britain.
Prints formed a significant part of the expanding machinery of mass communication and could thus influence taste and spread ideas. This can be interpreted as propaganda, or at least creation of an image that the owner of a property found desirable, and reality was consequently often compromised.
The illusion of actuality could be achieved by many adjustments and techniques employed by artists generally. Even if not entirely representational, a print may have much to reveal about fashions and attitudes towards the landscape garden. At their best they convey powerfully the atmosphere as well as the perception and possible idealisation of a garden. This topic has never been discussed with such rigour, and the book addresses the techniques of producing a print, the categories of print and how they were marketed, and includes studies of the greatest engravers and of selected gardens that prints illuminate particularly well.
Changes can be observed both in the developments in print-making and in the journey of the landscape garden.
