Don't Forget the Garden
19 June 2020
Why your green spaces deserve art and antiques too.
Giles Kime
Interiors Editor of Country Life and Former Editor of Decanter magazine, Giles has written three books: Decorating, Decorate To Speculate and Secrets Of Wine.
Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), ‘Setting off for a Picnic on the Thames’, watercolour, 9.5 x 14 inches.
In a house that briefly boasted, until it was recently stolen, a £5 million gold loo, a flowerpot conservatively valued at £300,000 might seem rather unremarkable. But the 1700-year-old Roman sarcophagus discovered hidden in plain sight in the grounds of Blenheim Palace was anything but. Six foot long, it features Dionysus, Hercules and Ariadne engaged in bacchanalian revelry. It is likely to have been a piece of classical memorabilia bought back from a grand tour that was rather ignominiously repurposed as a receptacle for tulips. It serves as a reminder of the lavish treasures that give classic English gardens their highly distinctive flavour.
Now that travel is more commonplace than it was in the 18th century, we don’t feel the same need to commemorate it by creating fine architectural monuments to our grand tours, in the style of Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester, or Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. Where a neo-classical folly, or Renaissance bronze of a Roman statue was once de rigueur, a few Instagram snaps of that weekend in Corfu or Rome – for most people anyway – will now do.
As well as acting as homage to classicism, statuary was also a vital ingredient in the transformation of English parkland into an idealised classical landscape.
Then, as today, statuary lends focus and structure to a garden and, most important of all, has the capacity to turn a space that is quite ordinary into one that is really rather extraordinary. It isn’t necessary to look far for evidence. At Rousham in Oxfordshire, William Kent transformed the banks of the River Cherwell into a succession of dramatic scenes such as dying gladiators and a horse being savaged by a lion against a backdrop of temples.
Yet, there’s more to garden statuary than moss and lichen-clad classicism. In recent years, contemporary artists and designers have employed sculpture in a more modern idiom to make bold statements inspired by the elemental simplicity of giants such as Henry Moore. For simplicity combined with highly eye-catching finishes, a good port of call is David Harber whose geometric sculptures lend an otherworldly focus to gardens.
Ivon Hitchens, ‘Seated Nude – Courtyard, Greenleaves’, circa 1942, oil on canvas, 61 x 54.5 cm.
Meanwhile the work of sculptors such as Barry Flanagan demonstrates the dramatic possibilities of injecting dynamic form into otherwise still spaces, most famously in the form of leaping hares. As one might expect, animal form creates a visual language all of their own, notably in the work of artists such as Rupert Till and Hamish Machie that create a focus for long views or to punctuate parkland settings. The work of Nic Fiddian Green – notably his giant horses’ heads cast in bronze - show that 21st-century sculpture can be as transformative as classical. In the landscape that surrounds the studio in Surrey, his work lends a breathtaking poignancy to even the most substantial vistas. At Marble Arch, a 33 foot high piece adds a surreal and serene touch to its busy urban surroundings.
As well as being places of visual pleasure, gardens should also offer physical comfort, too. In the 19th century, designers explored the robust, weatherproof possibilities of cast iron, creating naturalistic benches and chairs formed of leaves, twigs and branches that have survived far longer than wood ever could.
This Autumn something very big is about to hit the world of antique garden furniture. The publication of Rattan: A World of Elegance and Charm by Lulu Lytle, the founder of Soane Britain, looks set to crystalise a growing fascination. The woven furniture that featured in everything from impressionist paintings to portraits of Marilyn Monroe, captured the imagination of some of the 20th century’s most inventive designers including Josef Hoffman, Jean-Michel Frank, Renzo Mongiardino and Arne Jacobsen. Robust, textured and highly malleable, its heyday was a long one, spanning the Edwardian period, Art Deco, mid-century modernist and it continues to excite today.
With the influences of ancient Greece and Rome, modernism and the natural world, it isn’t hard to see why garden sculpture and furniture continues to exert such a mesmeric draw on collectors.
Nevertheless gardens still lag behind interiors when it comes to carefully curated collections of antiques. But with the current predicted exodus of house buyers from cities to the country, all that could be set to change.
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