548
in European tradition as “borrowed scenery.”
9
Yet, such visionary landscape had
become the very world, lived in alternatively from the rude streets covered first in
the gray dust from burning wood and then, after its implementation by Henry II, the
soot of burning coal—from those bellowing byproducts following the 1698 patent
by Thomas Savery of steam power, augmented by James Watts’ aggressive sale of
engines and then Oliver Evans’ upgrade for the conversion of coal to energy. The
steam locomotive became a British rage; pastureland replaced tillage just as waterpower had begun to replace human labor as early as 1768. The resulting impact on
landscapes was dramatic, with Europe’s population increasing by some 200 million
in the nineteenth century, a 20% rise in the city of London during the decade of the
1820s. By 1853 Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England
10
referenced
“suburban country seats surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens.” Within
three decades, “The speculative builder [had] become the pest of suburban
London.”
11
Sir Kenneth Clark dates that discernible tension of elements inherent to an aesthetic life—a work of art, a distinct appreciation for scenery propounded upon a real
place—to the Swiss artist Konrad Witz’s rendition of “the background” for his
painting “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes” (1444) which features Lake Geneva;
and then, precisely half- century later, various precise geographical locations feature
in water colors by Albrecht Dürer, including the alleged first drawing of an actual
town, one on the map, Innsbruck.
12
58.3 “Even in Arcadia There Am I”
“Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?” wrote
Thoreau, asserting the self-confessed paradoxical presence of Nicolas Poussin’s
“Et in Arcadia ego” (1637–1638)—“Even in Arcadia (There) Am I”—a painting
which he interpreted after a 1620 version by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Il
Guercino) depicting a country scene in which two shepherds stand “contemplating a skull.”
13
This vision strikes at the historic root of that tension between the
urban and the rural, its infinity of incarnations within that primate who moves
freely between the two neverworlds. Writing in 1972 of threats to Britain’s second
largest national park, the 845-square-mile Snowdonia, Amory Lovins described
the “30,000 people who try to make a living from its land. The soil is thin, poor,
acid, and high; business is very bad at the quarries; the economy is chronically
9 op. cit., After Eden, p. 91.
10 1850–1859, iii. 1., p. 351, as cited under “Suburban,” “Su – Sz.” The Oxford English Dictionary,
p. 71, Volume X, Oxford, UK, Reprinted 1961.
11 Law Times, LXX. 130/2, ibid.
12 Landscape into Art, by Kenneth Clark, John Murray, London, 1949, p. 19.
13 Landscape Painting – A History, by Nils Büttner, Translated by Russell Stockman, Abbeville
Press Publishers, New York, 2000, p. 142.
58 Metaphysical Landscapes
in European tradition as “borrowed scenery.”
9
Yet, such visionary landscape had
become the very world, lived in alternatively from the rude streets covered first in
the gray dust from burning wood and then, after its implementation by Henry II, the
soot of burning coal—from those bellowing byproducts following the 1698 patent
by Thomas Savery of steam power, augmented by James Watts’ aggressive sale of
engines and then Oliver Evans’ upgrade for the conversion of coal to energy. The
steam locomotive became a British rage; pastureland replaced tillage just as waterpower had begun to replace human labor as early as 1768. The resulting impact on
landscapes was dramatic, with Europe’s population increasing by some 200 million
in the nineteenth century, a 20% rise in the city of London during the decade of the
1820s. By 1853 Thomas Babington Macaulay’s History of England
10
referenced
“suburban country seats surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens.” Within
three decades, “The speculative builder [had] become the pest of suburban
London.”
11
Sir Kenneth Clark dates that discernible tension of elements inherent to an aesthetic life—a work of art, a distinct appreciation for scenery propounded upon a real
place—to the Swiss artist Konrad Witz’s rendition of “the background” for his
painting “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes” (1444) which features Lake Geneva;
and then, precisely half- century later, various precise geographical locations feature
in water colors by Albrecht Dürer, including the alleged first drawing of an actual
town, one on the map, Innsbruck.
12
58.3 “Even in Arcadia There Am I”
“Who placed us with eyes between a microscopic and a telescopic world?” wrote
Thoreau, asserting the self-confessed paradoxical presence of Nicolas Poussin’s
“Et in Arcadia ego” (1637–1638)—“Even in Arcadia (There) Am I”—a painting
which he interpreted after a 1620 version by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Il
Guercino) depicting a country scene in which two shepherds stand “contemplating a skull.”
13
This vision strikes at the historic root of that tension between the
urban and the rural, its infinity of incarnations within that primate who moves
freely between the two neverworlds. Writing in 1972 of threats to Britain’s second
largest national park, the 845-square-mile Snowdonia, Amory Lovins described
the “30,000 people who try to make a living from its land. The soil is thin, poor,
acid, and high; business is very bad at the quarries; the economy is chronically
9 op. cit., After Eden, p. 91.
10 1850–1859, iii. 1., p. 351, as cited under “Suburban,” “Su – Sz.” The Oxford English Dictionary,
p. 71, Volume X, Oxford, UK, Reprinted 1961.
11 Law Times, LXX. 130/2, ibid.
12 Landscape into Art, by Kenneth Clark, John Murray, London, 1949, p. 19.
13 Landscape Painting – A History, by Nils Büttner, Translated by Russell Stockman, Abbeville
Press Publishers, New York, 2000, p. 142.
58 Metaphysical Landscapes