Editing Capability Brown (section)

===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>