KENT, WILLIAM (1685-1748)

This article appears in Volume V15, Page 735 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: JUN-KHA

KENT, WILLIAM (1685-1748) , English " painter, architect, and the father of modern gardening," as

Horace

HORACE [QuINTus HORATIUS FLACCUS] (65-8 B.C.)

Walpole in his Anecdotes of

Painting

PAINTING

describes him, was born in Yorkshire in 1685. Apprenticed to a coach-painter, his ambition soon led him to London, where he began life as a portrait and historical painter. He found patrons, who sent him in 1710 to study in Italy; and at Rome he made other friends, among them Lord Burlington, with whom he returned to England in 1719. Under that nobleman's roof Kent chiefly resided till his death on the 12th of April 1748obtaining abundant commissions in all departments of his art, as well as various

court

appointments which brought him an income of 600 a year. Walpole says that Kent was below mediocrity in

painting

PAINTING

. He had some little

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

and skill in architecture, of which Holkham palace is perhaps the most favourable example. The mediocre statue of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey sufficiently stamps his

powers

POWERS, HIRAM (1805-1873)

as a sculptor. His merit in landscape gardening is greater. In Walpole's language, Kent " was painter enough to

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a

great

GREAT

system

SYSTEM

from the twilight of imperfect essays." In short, he was the first in English gardening to vindicate the natural against the artificial. Banishing all the clipped monstrosities of the

topiary

TOPIARY

art in yew, box or holly, releasing the streams from the conventional canal and

marble

MARBLE (from Lat. marmor, Gr. pApľapos, shining stone)

basin, and rejecting the mathematical symmetry of ground plan then in vogue for gardens, Kent endeavoured to imitate the variety of nature, with due regard to the principles of light and shade and perspective. Sometimes he carried his imitation too far, as when he planted dead trees in Kensington gardens to give a greater air of truth to the

scene

SCENE (Fr. scene, Lat. scaena, Gr. oflvil, a tent or booth, a stage or scene)

, though he himself was one of the first to detect the folly of such an extreme. Kent's plans were designed rather with a view to immediate affect over a comparatively small area than with regard to any broader or subsequent results.

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