Editing Capability Brown (section)

==Landscape gardens==
It is estimated that Brown was responsible for more than 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work endures at [[Belvoir Castle]], [[Croome Court]] (where he also designed the house), [[Blenheim Palace]], [[Warwick Castle]], [[Harewood House]], [[Chatsworth House|Chatsworth]], [[Highclere Castle]], [[Appuldurcombe House]], [[Milton Abbey]] (and nearby [[Milton Abbas]] village) and in traces at [[Kew Gardens]] and many other locations.<ref name="kew">{{cite web|url=http://www.kew.org/heritage/people/brown.html |title=Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716–1783) |work=Kew History & Heritage |publisher=Kew Gardens |access-date=16 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121008111550/http://www.kew.org/heritage/people/brown.html |archive-date=8 October 2012  }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Lancelot Brown |url=https://www.chatsworth.org/visit-chatsworth/chatsworth-estate/park/about-the-park/lancelot-brown/ |access-date=22 November 2024 |website=www.chatsworth.org}}</ref> 
[[Image:BadmintonMorris edited.jpg|thumb|left|280px|[[Badminton House]] in [[Gloucestershire]]: features of the Brownian landscape at full maturity in the 19th century]]
His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scatterings of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers were a new style within the English landscape, a 'gardenless' form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles.
[[File:Brown's Pond at Sandleford, Berkshire. Designed by and named after Lancelot Brown.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Brown's Pond at [[Sandleford]], [[Berkshire]]. One of a string of former priory fish ponds adapted by Brown who was at Sandleford on behalf of [[Elizabeth Montagu]] from 1781.]]
His landscapes were at the forefront of fashion. They were fundamentally different from what they replaced, the well-known formal gardens of England which were criticised by [[Alexander Pope]] and others from the 1710s. Starting in 1719, William Kent replaced these with more naturalistic compositions, which reached their greatest refinement in Brown's landscapes.

At [[Hampton Court]] Brown encountered [[Hannah More]] in 1782 and she described his "grammatical" manner in her literary terms: {{"'}}Now <em>there</em>' said he, pointing his finger, 'I make a comma, and there' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.{{'"}}<ref>Quoted in Peter Willis, "Capability Brown in Northumberland" ''Garden History'' '''9'''.2 (Autumn, 1981, pp. 157–183) p. 158.</ref> Brown's patrons saw the idealised landscapes he was creating for them in terms of the Italian landscape painters they admired and collected, as Kenneth Woodbridge first observed in the landscape at [[Stourhead]], a "Brownian" landscape (with an un-Brownian circuit walk) in which Brown himself was not involved.[[Image:Blenheim Palace Grand Bridge.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|At [[Blenheim Palace]] in [[Oxfordshire]], Brown dammed the paltry stream flowing under [[Vanbrugh]]'s Grand Bridge, drowning half the structure with improved results]]

===Criticism===
Perhaps Brown's sternest critic was his contemporary [[Uvedale Price]], who likened Brown's clumps of trees to "so many puddings turned out of one common mould."<ref name=Price>[[Uvedale Price]]. [https://archive.org/details/essayonpicturesq02pric ''An Essay on the Picturesque'']. J. Robson, London, 1796. Page 268. (In the [https://archive.org/details/gri_33125010885552/page/n16 <!-- pg=191 --> 1794 edition] this is on page 191.)</ref> [[Russell Page]], who began his career in the Brownian landscape of [[Longleat]] but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes."<ref>{{cite book |first1=Russell |last1=Page |author-link=Russell Page |title=Education of a Gardener |type=Paperback |pages=384 |publisher=The Harvill Press |orig-year=1962 |date=3 May 1994 |isbn=0-00-271374-8}} {{ISBN|978-0-00-271374-0}}</ref>

[[Richard Owen Cambridge]], the English poet and [[satire|satirical]] author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'." This was a typical statement reflecting the controversy about Brown's work, which has continued over the last 200 years. By contrast, a recent historian and author, Richard Bisgrove, described Brown's process as perfecting nature by "judicious manipulation of its components, adding a tree here or a concealed head of water there. His art attended to the formal potential of ground, water, trees and so gave to English landscape its ideal forms. The difficulty was that less capable imitators and less sophisticated spectators did not see nature perfected... they saw simply what they took to be nature."{{citation needed|date=May 2018}}

This deftness of touch was recognised in his own day; one anonymous [[obituary]] writer opined: "Such, however, was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered; so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken."{{citation needed|date=May 2018}} In 1772, Sir [[William Chambers (architect)|William Chambers]] (though he did not mention Brown by name) complained that the "new manner" of gardens "differ very little from common fields, so closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them."<ref>{{cite book |first1=William |last1=Chambers |author-link=William Chambers (architect) |title=A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening |publisher=W. Griffin |year=1772 |page=v |url=https://archive.org/details/gri_dissertation00cham}}</ref>