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Volume y No. 1 The BRITISH AKT Journal The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire Jeffrey Auerbach I t is more than a century since JR Seeley remarked in The Expansion of England (1H83) that the British Empire developed in 'a fit of absence of mind'.' The rea,sons for and motives unt.lerlying its expansion, whether ptilitical. diplomatic, economic, social, intellectual, or religious, are fairly well known, however much they continue tt) be debated.- In recent years scholars have also begun to explore the impact of the empire on the so-called metropolitan centre. es[xrcially ¡politically.^ and have even questioned the ver\ boundaries between métropole and periphery' particularly in the cultural realni.^ Yet serious and fundamental questions remain about the place of the empire in the British mint!. How- did Britons conceive of and represent their empire, especially during the 19th century, the period of its greatest expansi()n? How did they come to regard it as being more unified than it actually was at the administrative level?^ What, if an>'thing, gave the empire coherence, especially in the half-century bef(ïre the steamship and the electric telegraph? How did the individual regions of the empire - 'one continent, a hundred peninsulas, five huntlred promontories, a thousand lakes, two thousand ri\'ers. ten thousand ¡.slands'"^» - become pan of an imperial whole? Viliat were the vectors of empire, and if, as man>' scholars have recently suggested, they should not be characterized in metre)["H)litan peripheral terms, then on what basis? The Victorian imagination constructed the British Enijiirc through a variety of cultural forms. The most famous of these were surely the maps of the world with the territories of the empire coloured pink, of which many versions were published beginning as early as Victoria's coronatitin in \Hy to promote imperial unity.^ In recent decades scholars have- amply documented the role of literature - especially fictitin. but also children's and travel literature and political speeches - in constructing an image of the people and regions of the empire as backward, uncivilized, irrational, feminine, exotic. decayed, impoverished, and irredeemably other'." But most of the litcnir\' analysis that has followed in the wake of Said's path-breaking Orientéilism ( 1978) has focused on the Middle East and Inilia. and lo a lesser degree A frica and ihe Caribbean, neglecting, most glaringly, the white settler colonie-i. which were central components of the 19thcentur\' British Empire. Photography, too, has received some attention, for constructing an empire built around racial hierarchies, big-game hunting, [iristine mountain views, antl efficient military campaigns, but phoiography admittedly drew on earlier pictorial traditions and imagery.'' Advertisements, especially those produced under the direction of the state-supported Empire Marketing Boartl. aiso played a rt)le, largely by commodif>1ng the empire. though not until the late 19th and early 2üth centuries.'" ;Vrt too was critical in helping British men and wt)men construct and visualize their empire." This was especially irue of the picturesque idiom, which had a powerful impact on almtist all subsequent forms of imperial representation, including ph()t(igraph\' and ad\ertising from the miti-i9th century' onwards. Most of the recent studies in this area have emphasized the 'idet)logical work" of paintings, thnuigh which 'the apprt>priation of land, resources, labour, und 1 iiiN:i Ki'i'fUCfl by William tltx.igt.'s. fl~7!i O National Maritime Museum, t/jndon. Ministr\- of Defence Art Collection 2 (M/v Toil n. from Ihe Camp s Liay Road by dvnqic French Angas, from Tbe Kaffirs Illustnutd (1849) culture is transformed into something that is aesthetically pleasing antl morally satisfying'.'- Others have ft)cused on the construction tif the (noble) savage and the myth of empty lands.'-^ But tine limitation that has affected almost all of these studies, especially tho.se preoccupied with imperial lantls (as opposetl to the pe<)|>le of the empire), has been their ft)cus tin either a single artist or a single geographic area. '^ Without a comparative lens, however, there can be no comprehensive analysis of British imperial art. and therefore no untlerstanding t)f ht)w that em|iire was constructed visually and picttirially The argument offered here is that the picturesque, the literary and visual aesthetic which tieveloped during the sectind half of the 18th centuiy helped to unite and homogenize the many regions of the Briiish empire. For the better part of a centur\ beginning around 177S, British artists who travelled the empire fretjuently constructed and depicted what they saw thrtJugh the lens of the picturesque. ]iresenting regions as diverse as South Africa. India. Australia, and the Pacific Islands in remarkably similar ways. In the prticess they integrated the far-flung regions t>f the empire, 47

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Page 1: The AKT The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire Picturesque.pdf · The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire Jeffrey Auerbach It is more than a century since JR Seeley

Volume y No. 1 The BRITISH AKT Journal

The picturesque and the homogenisation of Empire

Jeffrey Auerbach

It is more than a century since JR Seeley remarked in TheExpansion of England (1H83) that the British Empiredeveloped in 'a fit of absence of mind'.' The rea,sons for

and motives unt.lerlying its expansion, whether ptilitical.diplomatic, economic, social, intellectual, or religious, arefairly well known, however much they continue tt) bedebated.- In recent years scholars have also begun to explorethe impact of the empire on the so-called metropolitan centre.es[xrcially ¡politically.̂ and have even questioned the ver\boundaries between métropole and periphery' particularly inthe cultural realni.^ Yet serious and fundamental questionsremain about the place of the empire in the British mint!. How-did Britons conceive of and represent their empire, especiallyduring the 19th century, the period of its greatest expansi()n?How did they come to regard it as being more unified than itactually was at the administrative level?^ What, if an>'thing, gavethe empire coherence, especially in the half-century bef(ïre thesteamship and the electric telegraph? How did the individualregions of the empire - 'one continent, a hundred peninsulas,five huntlred promontories, a thousand lakes, two thousandri\'ers. ten thousand ¡.slands'"̂ » - become pan of an imperialwhole? Viliat were the vectors of empire, and if, as man>'scholars have recently suggested, they should not becharacterized in metre)["H)litan peripheral terms, then on whatbasis?

The Victorian imagination constructed the British Enijiircthrough a variety of cultural forms. The most famous of thesewere surely the maps of the world with the territories of theempire coloured pink, of which many versions werepublished beginning as early as Victoria's coronatitin in \Hyto promote imperial unity.^ In recent decades scholars have-amply documented the role of literature - especially fictitin.but also children's and travel literature and political speeches- in constructing an image of the people and regions of theempire as backward, uncivilized, irrational, feminine, exotic.decayed, impoverished, and irredeemably other'." But mostof the litcnir\' analysis that has followed in the wake of Said'spath-breaking Orientéilism ( 1978) has focused on the MiddleEast and Inilia. and lo a lesser degree A frica and iheCaribbean, neglecting, most glaringly, the white settlercolonie-i. which were central components of the 19thcentur\'British Empire. Photography, too, has received someattention, for constructing an empire built around racialhierarchies, big-game hunting, [iristine mountain views, antlefficient military campaigns, but phoiography admittedlydrew on earlier pictorial traditions and imagery.''Advertisements, especially those produced under thedirection of the state-supported Empire Marketing Boartl.aiso played a rt)le, largely by commodif>1ng the empire.though not until the late 19th and early 2üth centuries.'"

;Vrt too was critical in helping British men and wt)menconstruct and visualize their empire." This was especiallyirue of the picturesque idiom, which had a powerful impacton almtist all subsequent forms of imperial representation,including ph()t(igraph\' and ad\ertising from the miti-i9thcentury' onwards. Most of the recent studies in this area haveemphasized the 'idet)logical work" of paintings, thnuighwhich 'the apprt>priation of land, resources, labour, und

1 iiiN:i Ki'i'fUCfl by William tltx.igt.'s. fl~7!i O National Maritime Museum, t/jndon.Ministr\- of Defence Art Collection

2 (M/v Toil n. from Ihe Camp s Liay Road by dvnqic French Angas, from Tbe KaffirsIllustnutd (1849)

culture is transformed into something that is aestheticallypleasing antl morally satisfying'.'- Others have ft)cused onthe construction tif the (noble) savage and the myth ofempty lands.'-^ But tine limitation that has affected almost allof these studies, especially tho.se preoccupied with imperiallantls (as opposetl to the pe<)|>le of the empire), has beentheir ft)cus tin either a single artist or a single geographicarea. '̂ Without a comparative lens, however, there can be nocomprehensive analysis of British imperial art. and thereforeno untlerstanding t)f ht)w that em|iire was constructedvisually and picttirially

The argument offered here is that the picturesque, theliterary and visual aesthetic which tieveloped during thesectind half of the 18th centuiy helped to unite andhomogenize the many regions of the Briiish empire. For thebetter part of a centur\ beginning around 177S, British artistswho travelled the empire fretjuently constructed anddepicted what they saw thrtJugh the lens of the picturesque.]iresenting regions as diverse as South Africa. India. Australia,and the Pacific Islands in remarkably similar ways. In theprticess they integrated the far-flung regions t>f the empire,

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The BRITISH ABJJottrnal Volume Y No,l

providing a measure of coherence and control that wereclearly lacking on the ground at a time when it could takeanyw'here from three to six months to travel from London toCalcutta, a time lag vt-hich delayed the circulation of news andmade virtually impossible the execution of governmentpolicy^'' Although there wa.s, within the picture,squeframework, ,some freedom to capture and convey localdifferences, everywhere it was deployed it served to concealthe hardships and beautify the frequently unpleasantsurroundings that characterized life in the imperial zone,refracting local people and conditions through a single,formulaic lens," '̂

Moreover, in so far as the picturesque had initially beenused to represent the Engii.sh landscape, depicting imperiallandscapes in these same terms meant that Britisii artiststravelling overseas ended u[i portraying so-called peripheralterritories as similar to, rather than different from, so-calledmetropolitan territories. In short, the picturesque was aboutthe creation of sameness rather than difference, though thisis a point that requires some clarification as 'sameness'carries a number ot" different meanings. In the late 18thcentury, Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price, two of thefounding theoreticians of the picture,sque, challenged thefashionable style of landscape gardening exemplified hy thework of Capability Brown, They accused him of creating only'eternal smoothness and sameness' in place of which theywanted to see 'roughness', meaning features such as moss-grown terraces and other intricate details to break upotherwise smooth vistas,'''

The analysis that follows, however, uses sameness as anantonym not of roughness but of strangeness and difference,in order to take into account a certain tension l">etween thepicturesque and the exotic. The arrist's purpose in travelling toIndia or rhe South Seas was often to report on theirstrangeness or difference, but as Giles Tillotson has put it in hisbook on William Hcxlges, 'the application of an Englishaesthetic co Indian scenes seived rather to restrain than toreveal their exotic nature','^ Tiie images di.scussed here willalso demonstrate that sameness can be used to describe thesubstantive and stylistic similarities between paintings andaquatints executed across the many regions of the BritishEmpire, To be sure, liifference (whether in the linguistic or thepostcolonial sease) and .sameness (meaning identification,mimicry, mimesis) are complementary opposites and cannottruly be divided, '̂ But the analysis that follows is an attempt tomove the discussion of .sameness antl difference from its focuson language anti people, which is now well-trodden terrain, tothat of place,-̂ 'i' This is especially impi)nant becau.se thepicturesque was not simply carried from England overseas, butrather developed as much overseas as in Britain, and thereforemoved not unidirectionally from the imperial centre to theperiphery, but frequently around the periphery, liiis in turnsuggests the importance of envisioning the British Empire notso much as a '.spoked wheel' - imperial centre and periphery- hut as a 'web' built around "multiple centres' or 'bundles ofrelationships', not least of which were horizontal linkagesbetween colonial sites, regions, experiences, and culturalproducts,-i

The [liccuresque took a.s its starting point the idea thatnature was imperfect and needed to be organized when

it was painted. Artists, frequently using a Claude glass, a smallconvex mirror that brought everv' scene within the compassof a picture, employed a formulaic method of cotnpositionthat was based upon certain rules of cla.ssical proportion, andwhich pRKluced images with an identifiable picturesquestructure, composition, and tint. The picturesque, which

William Hotiges employed when he painted Tahiti Revisited(PI 1) around 1776, divided the landscape into threedistances: a darkened and detailed foregr(.>und, a strongly litand deep-toned middle-ground, and a hazy background.Features such as trees and ruins were ttj be positioned so asto create a balanced composition that provided a sense ofboth harmony and variet\'. and to push the viewer's eye tothe middle distance, as in a stage .set. In a typical picturesciuescene there would be a winding river; two coulisses, or sidescreens, which are the opposite banks of the river and which,in conjunction with some hills, mark the persjiective; a frontscreen which points out the winding of the river; and a hazy,rugged, mountainous background. There was also anidentifiable picturesque tint, the soft golden light of theRoman Campagna, which, as a number of scholars havesuggesteti, artists transposed first onto the Englishlandscape, and then carried to [he furthest reaches of theBritish Empire,^^

BUI while .scholars of the picturesque have generallyfocused on its English origins, in the writings of Knight andPrice, it is important to note that many of its foremostpractitioners drew their inspiration as much from the empireitself as from the English Lake District. Hodges, for example,was a student of Richartl Wilson, the Welsh laniLscape painterwho wa.s strongly influenced hy Claude and one of thefounders of the English landscape school, but instead ofcompleting his art education with a Grand Tour to Italy as histeacher had done, he instead became the draughtsman forCook on his second voyage to the Pacific, and carried to Indiatropical ideas of light and vegetation, in addition to Englishideas about picturesque com position, ̂ 3

This explains, in part at least, a number of the tensions inTahiti Revisited.-* The painting certainly illustrates thees.sential elements of the picturesque, but it also revealsHodges' struggle to combine classical idealism, scientificaccuracy, and Bougainvillian exoticism. He has replacedconventional cla,ssical motives - olive trees, cypresses, andArcadian shepherdesses - with breadfruits, coconut palms,and Tahitian girls bathing near the water.-^ In the interest ofempirical recording, he has painted the girls not as idealbeauties, but with characteristic tattoo markings.̂ ** And, theclouds around the mountaintops reflect n(jt an idealizedItalian countr^'side, but are the outcome of Hf)dges trying torender faithfully the atmosphere of the tropics, Hodges'openness to new environments and cultures, his (modestand occasional) questioning of the supremacy of classicalprototypes, and his concern for scientific truth - itself ofcourse a problematic and eulture-bound notion - werealways in conflict with the Claudean, picturesque principlesdemanded of the landscape artists of his day But because hehad in effect completed his artistic education in the SouthSeas, he had some freedom from contemporary academicpractices, and was able to capture for the first time thebrilliant light of the tropics. What this painting reveals - andit needs to be underscored here that this is obviously not apreliminary sketch, but a finished oil ¡Kiinting, and thatHotiges was paid ¡¿,^50 per year by the admiralty to producepaintings of his journeys that wtmId promote commerce andempire - is Hodges at once both capturing the light and feelof the South Pacific and introducing an element of exoticism,transforming Tahiti into a sensual and even sexual paradise,but at the same time subsuming that difference antlexoticism beneath the familiar structure tif the picture.sque.

A remarkably similar picturesque frame can be seen inCape Totvn. from tbe Camp's Bay Road (PI 2), by GeorgeFrench Angas, an artist, get)logist, and expltirer who laterbecame director of the Government Museum in Sydney, and

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Volume y No.l The BRITISH AKT Journal

who [luhlished a book ailletl 'í'bc Kitjfirs lUtistratt'ä in 18-49from which this plate is taken. As Angas himself wrote, 'CapeTown... is most picturesquely situated on the shores of TiibleBay', and he claimed that nothing could exceed the beauty ofthe .scene, with 'bold, abrupt, rugged mountains, the fertileplains and gardens, and the deep blue waters of the Bay".This image illustrates the picturesque use of the foreground,with the steps and stone building and minuscule figure in theleft-corner creating an impression of grandiosity; the slo[3es(.if the hills on either side that serve as framing devices andchannel the viewer's eye towards the middle-ground, whichis Cape Town; the rich blue colour of the water, contrastingwith the greens and browns of the landscape: and. in thettistance, the faded grey mountains and the pale blue sky. The.scene is in perfect harmony, in terms of perspective, colour,and relationship between the human world and the naturalworld. Angas has also pointedly inclutled, in the foreground,a number of kniphofia. more commonly known as red hotpukcrs, pereniuais which have striking red flowers in thewinter and are native to South Africa, although they havesince became identified with English cottage gardens andhave al.so been widely imported to Australia and NewZealand, They provide just a touch of local colour andflavour, but without ever threatening the formalrequirements of the picturesque.

Hodges and Angas in these two paintings u.sed similartechniques to turn the distant and unfamiliar into theknowable anti the familiar, to make what was a foreign andfundamentally "different" landscape, with unusual flora andfauna, appear remarkably 'similar' to those landscapes withwhich they antl their audiences would have been familiar.There are, however, important differences between thesetwcj paintings, Hodges ha.s presented Tahitian society aspristine and untouched by Europeans; nowhere is thereevidence of Cook's visit.^" Angas has done the opposite: hispainting maps the linear streets of Cape Town and the extentof European settlement. Angas" painting aLso lacks theelements of the sublime, which are present in Hodges'mountains. Yet both the.se images reflect certain imperialinterests that were pervasive at the time they were produced.In the late lMth century the idea was to find previouslyundiscovered, Edenic lands that would stimulate interest inexploration and exploitation,^^ By the mid-19thcentury, asemigration and settlement became paramount, the idea.

5Holiart Town, taken fwm tbe Carden wbere I lived by ]O\\Í\ I..I>JII,I, i.i.i^. DixsDiiGalleries, State Library of New South Wales

4 View of l'on Bowen. Queensland by William We.stall, 1811. © National MaritimeMuseum, London. Ministry of Defenie An Coik-aion

underlying Angas' work, was to present regions of the empire;is safe and familiar for potential European settlers.-^ In short,within the picturesque aesthetic the art of empire servedimportant and changing strategic purposes.

An almost identical yet odtlly mirrored version of Angas'painting is Hobart Town, taken from the garden where /

lii'ed (PI 3), by John Glover, who arrived in Tasmania in 1831and executed this work a year later. The painting was madein front of Glover's residence, Stanwell Hall, a two-storystone structure that had been built in 1828 in the Georgian.style, featuring the plain and symmetrical facade found inmany domestic dwellings in England at the time. The hou.seand garden overk)ok the town, a thriving settlement of10,000 that was the second largest in size in Australia, withthe Derwent River, named after its Derbyshire counterpart,beyond, dotted with .sailing vessels. Also visible is a whitechurch, with Government House just to its left and theBarracks to its right, suggesting that beyond the boundariesof personal property implied by the painting's subtitle, thechurch, the executive, and the military remain the dominantfeatures of the colonial scene. Despite the obvious

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The BRITISH AKT Journal Volume Y No. 1

picturesque structure and elements, its needs to beacknowledgeti that the painting is ,s(imething of an anomalywithin Glover's Australian oeitvre, arguably being concernedmore with informational topography than with picturesqueview making.^f As John McPhcc has pointed out. behind thescreen of the artist's hou.se and garden, the picture marks theachievements anci expansion ofthe cok)nia! settlement 'withseveral view-points incorporated.,, so that the whole of thetown may be shown, and the landscape rather flattened sothat all streets and buildings could be included',''

Hobart Totim also illustrates what Alfred Cix>sby h;is termed'ecological imperialism', the process by which Europeancarried flora, fauna, and disease around the globe,-''Geraniums and ro.ses, [>ainted in meticulous detail andmentioned in Glover's inscription, dominate the foreground,Gerajiiums were especially popular in the new colony becau.sethey could thrive on very little water. Several varieties areindigenous to Australia, but others arrived on board one of thefirst ships from England in 1788, and additional varieties,native to southern Africa, were unwittingly carried intoAustralia in seed form on the coats of animals taken on boardships that called at Cape Tuwn,-'̂ By the time Glover arrived inwhat was then called Van Dieman's Uind, settlers had alreadyattempted to cultivate virtu:üly all European vegetables, andthe Glover5 in fact brought with them a range of northernhemispheric seedlings, ¡Uthough not all survived the journey.Glover's son recorded that their tangerine .saplings died enroute., but enough ofthe plants survived that the L:ind Board,in endorsing Glover's application for a land grant, recordedapprovingly that 'he has imported English song birds andshrubs',3** In this painting, therefore, the flowers create animpression of homeliness, familiarity, and connectednessbetween the regions of the British Empire. Not only didimmigrants import English vegetation in order to acclimatizetheir environment; they refoshioned that environment - bothphysically and representationally - in order to resemble thetypically picturesque English landscape.^^

Elsewhere in this painting, however. Glover has madeconcessions to a vastly different environment. He has toneddown the rich greens of the English countryside, iind has shownthe trees as distinct entities, befitting the somewhat sparseAustralian forests, rather than as part of the dense foliage thatcharacterized European forests. And, the large areas of greenerypresent in Hobart Town constitute a marked departure from theclosely packed villages and towns of rural England.- '̂' Ultimatelythis painting is .simiiiLr to Angas' Cape Town in terms of theoverall picturesque structure of the work; the ways in which itreprïxluces femiliar English elements, such as the GeorgianStanweU Hall, the roses and geraniums, and the river Derwent;and, simultaneously, its incori.X)nUion of indigenous Australiancharacteristics, but subsumed within the picturesque.

At least in the eady years of the 19th century, however,translating the Australian landscape into the picturesqueproved quite challenging, as it occasionally did for Glover.37William Westall, who accompanied the mapmaker MatthewFlinders on his circumnavigation ofthe continent of Australiafrom 1801-3, was disappointed by his search for scenery fromwhich to make oil paintings to be displayed in London afterthe fashion of his colleague William Daniell. who hadsuccessfully shown his views of India ai the Royal Academy,For Westall the coastline did not yield the exotic subjectmatter he had hoped to find, and he considered Australia tobe pictonally unpromising. Shortly after leaving Australianshores, he summed up liis years on the Flinders voyage as abarren experience, and he was pessimistic about the drawingshe had made, about which he wrote: 'When executed [they]can neither afford pleasure from exhibiting the face of a

beautiful country nor curiosity from their singularity'.Westall's paintings are especially important because they areso clearly at odds with his written descriptions of thelandscape. In his 1811 \^ew of Port Bowen, Queensland (Pi4), he depicts the triumvirate of Australian novelty - flora,fauna, and Alioriginal people - but the ¡ungle ,setting conflictswith his description ofthe coast as 'barren', and it is also notin keeping with his description of the general appearance ofAustralia as 'differing little from the northern parts ofEngland'.'^ And st) here is an artist who initially was unable tofind the picturesque in Australia, yet ended up depictingAustralia as a land very different from his native England, butckiing ,so through familiar picturesque devices. Regardless,when he accepted a commission in 1809 for a series of oilpaintings of Australian land.scape views and exhibitcil them inLondon, there was considerable interest in his depictions ofplaces that had never before been seen by Europeans.-'^

Nor was Westall the only early artist who shared the viewthat the Australian landscape lacketl heauty'" ThomasWatling, a young painter from Dumfries who was transportedto Australia for forging Bank of Scotland guinea notes,famously decried his inability to find or mould thepicturesque from the land.scape ofthe penai colony Watlinghad been trained in the picture.sque mode of landscapepainting, and it was the absence of typically picturesquefeatures - old and gnarled trees, winding mountain paths.peasant cottages, and ¡agged and rocky cliffs - that depressedhim, 'The landscape painter', he wrote to his aunt, "may invain seek here that kind of beauty which arises from happy-opposed off-scapes. Bold rising hills, or azure distances wouldbe a kind of phenomena. The principal traits of the countryare extensive woods, spread over a little varied plain'." ButWatling knew well enough that picturesque paintings werenot simply transcripts of nature but arrangements of it,incorporating motifs culled from a number of sketches. As heput it. 'I confess that were I to select and combine, I mightavoid that ,sameness, and find engaging employment,' whichis exactly what he did with works such as A direct Northgeneral view of Sydney' Cove, which Bernard Smith hasdiscussed in terms of its application of Gilpin's theories aboutand drawings of the I^ke District, but which also bears astriking resemblance tu Wilson's Rome from the VillaMadama (1753).^^ Wilson's painting, executed for the Eari ofDartmouth, portrays one of the most famous prospects ofRome, the point from which ¡lilgrims had traditionally caughttheir flrst sight ofthe city, and thus was an appropriate modelfor Watling, who had to do iittle more than substitute somenewly-built cottages for the famous loggia of the VillaMadama, designed by Raphael for Ripe Clement VII, thatappears in the lower-right corner of Wilson's work;'^

Perhaps no artist painted Austraiia to looií more likeEngland than Conrad Martens, who arrived in New SouthWales in 1835 after having .sailed on the Beagle with CharlesDarwin. His Vt'etv from Rose Bank (PI 5), painted for thecommodities merchant Robert Campbell, shows a gardenpiazza looiiing over the newiy established villas surroundingWooUoomooloo Bay Martens has skilfully rendered thehouses of the wealthy colonists as though they were Italianvillas (which is how they were often described incontemporary literature), but he gives no hint that thesehouses lacked antiquity; in fact, none of the houses thatcould be seen from the terrace at Rose Bank in 1840 whenMartens produced this work was more than a decade old.This painting illustrates the process not .so much of creating'New Wodds from Old', as an exhibition of 19th-centuryAustralian and American landscape paintings put it, butrather of creating old worlds from new,'**

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Volume X No. 1 Tf^e BRITISH PiKt Journal

5 Vieu'from Rose Bank by Conrad Martens, 1840. National Gallery of Australia,Can tierra

6 A vieil-of Benaras hyWiWiam Hmlges. 18 U. By Permission of The Britishlibrary, i^4

GrtKr by Thomas Daniel!, 11791. Private Collection. tCounesy ofCbarles Greig, F.sc¡

Artists carrieti many of the.se .same picturesque principleswith them to India, where, as elsewhere, they

represented the landscape as harmonious, with greatemphasis placet! on intricately detailed foregrounds,irregular hills and buildings, and some reference to man'sjiresence in [he landscape, along with a ruin that waspicturesquely irregular as well as a reminder oí man'stransience. Artists wht) made picturesque paintings of Intliaalso remtïved, or at least softened, what many Europeanswould have regarded as its exotic features, Indianarchitecture, for instance, was either shown in conventionallypicturesque ruins, or had it.s (tt) European eyes) startling lacki)i symmetry reduced tti symmetrical forms. The firstprtjfessional British landscape painter to visit India was>X̂ illiam Hodges, in 1780, and his View of part of the city offíenaras (sic) (PI 6) dated the following year shows a numberof the.se elements, nt)tably in the varied and irregular outlineformed by the buildings, further enlivened by tufted trees; inthe sense of mtivement, created by small, scattered detailssuch as the figures and boats; and in the broken dabs ofcolour,"'̂ But as with his Tahiti painting, this one is also lifewith contradictions. In his Select Vietvs in India (London,177S-8), Htxiges wrote that the artist's responsibility was toeschew "fanciful representation' and keep the imagination'under the strict guitlance of cool judgment', yet his ownIndian paintings contratiict this very aim, composed as theyare according to European notions of the picturesque thatemphasized the loftiness of monuments though the use offoreshtjrtened perspective and exaggerated proportions.Despite hi.s time in the South Pacific, Hodges' finished oilsare firmly within the picturesque tradition, and remain trueto the Claudean principles of his teacher Richard Wilson,whose wtjrk he so often imitated.'"''

Although Hcidges was the first, the most famous Britishlantiscape painters to visit Intiia were Thomas Daniell and hisnephew William, who, after seven years of travels, broughtback with them to England .some 1,400 drawings, which theyused to produce six sumptuous volumes of aquatints.Although the Daniells repeatedly disparaged theirpredecessor's work for containing all sorts of inaccuracies,their goal of fidelity was continually undermined by theconstraints of the picturesque aesthetic. Searching always forthe Sublime antt the Beautiful, the Daniells generallyportrayed grandiose views carefully framed with palm andbanyan trees, and, on at least one occasion, enhanced thebeauty of a scene with the addition of a temple."*^ Part of thelure of India was its st range ne.s.s, and in fact a fascination withthe exotic was a part t)f the piccure.sque repertoire, and yetthe treatment of Intiian subjects in a picturesque mannertempered, rather than exaggerated, their exoticism, bymaking them conform to a set of supposedly universallyapplicable values derived from Eurtjpean art.

At the hands of Thomas Daniell, ftir exaniple, the Muslimtomb at Gaur was transformed into a Gothic folly in anArcatiian park. View in Gaur (PI 7) is in fact a strikinglyClaudean work, similar to several of the 17th-century master'spaimirigs including Pastoral caprice with the Arch ofConsiantine (1651) and Landscape with the father ofPs\>chesacrificing at the Temple of Apollo (1662).'*''All of these makeu.se of architectural capricci - actual building.s put together

by an artist in an imaginary arrangement - and share the samebasic structure and features: ruins on the left, trees on theright, a river winding through the centre ttjwartts a distantmountain that is rountietl rather than steep and craggy, anttseveral figures in the ftireground. thtJugh there is a greatersense of stasis in Daniell's painting, whereas in Claude's thefigures are turning and gesturing, giving those works a greatersen.se of movement. A much more immetiiate link, however,as in the case with Ht>dge.s, wa-s Kichart! Wilson, as Daniell'spainting both recalls and develops from such Wilsonimitations of Claude as Kew Gardens, the Ruined Arch (1762),a picture which for a Itmg time was thought to show an actualRoman ruin somewhere in

The picturesque not only tended to homogenize theregions of the British Empire; it also blurred all sorts of

boundaries between Britain and it.s empire, between homeantl abroati. métropole and periphei"}; even self and other.^"There are, for example, some important similarities betweenThomas Daniell's watercolour of The Ealls of Poppanassum(1804) and the Scottish landscape painter Jacob More's The

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Falls of Clyde (Cora Linn) (1771), both in their formalelements - the lushness of vegetation, the direction in whichthe water is flüwing, and the angle of the trees hanging overthe river - and in their approach to composition (Pis 8, 9).Both [xiintings emphasize the grandeur of the scenes byplacing several small figures in the foregrountl. tourists whoare in each case dwarfed by the thuntiering falls above them.But one has to look very closely at Daniell's painting to locatetwo slender palm trees, the only indication that the.se falls arenot locatetl in Europe, and even the twt) figures are ofIndeterminate t)rigin, and thus if they are Indian, they havebeen stripped of their "otherne.ss".

The paintings by Daniell and More also share certainfundamental similarities with Wilson's Lydford Waterfall.Tai'istock (c"1771-2), and all three probably drew on thewritings of Alexander Cozens, who made extensiveobservations of nature in order to clarify the link betweenlandscape phenomena and aesthetic feeling, and to identifywhat it was about natural events that stimulated specificemtnional responses in the viewer.̂ ' In The Various Speciesof Landscape Composition (1759), Cozens identified sixteen'compositions' or basic landscape themes, the eighth ofwhich was 'a waterfall'. Daniells and More, tike Wilson beforethem and the American Thtjmas Ct;le after them, took wild,seemingly inht)spitable scenes and made them lessfrightening, rendering the natural and the sublime movingrather than terrifying, with escape always assured.^' Whileperhaps owing mtjre to the romantic than the picturesquetradition (though the relationship between the two is toocomplicated to discuss here), the paintings by Daniell andMore illustrate yet again the extent to which late-18th-century aesthetics htimogenized the empire and de-emphasized its difference from the British and the familiar.

Given their similarities in terms of elements and approachto composition (if not in actual composition), these twoimages raise the important question of how colonial sites canbe differentiated frt)m the non-colonial. This point takes onadditional urgenty because the picturesque form representeda wide range of tourist sites both inside and outside of Britainand its empire, including Spain, Italy, and the German Rhine.It hardly needs to be pointed out, however, the abovewaterfall example notwithstanding, that there weresubstantial differences between so-called picturesque views oftourist sites In Britain and on the European continent on theone hand, and those of the British Em[-)ire on the other.̂ ^'\S1iereas in íate-18th-century Britain the picture.sciue impliedthe avoidance of anything precise or tame, insteademphasizing, variety, novelty, ruggedness, and wild, unkemptbeauty - Gilpin specified that 'ideas of neat and smotKh...strip the objec... of picturesque beauty'^' - imperial art,especially in India, consistently stiftened, regularized, andbeautified the natural landscape.'''' Consequently, a potentiallydangerous curiosity about colonial people and places, onethat might involve violence, confiict, and tippression, hasbeen diverted into the quest for aesthetic novelty It isimponant to recognize, therefore, the paiticularity of thepicturesque in the colonial environment and the pleasures itoffered, even while ntning the general similarities betweenthe domestic and the imperial picturesque.

Wliat then tloes it mean when colonial .sites are subjectedto a form of visual representation so closely asscxiiated withtourism? Given the primary function of the picturesque in theestablishment of both ilomestic aiid foreign tourism, it wouldseem that the ctilonial and the touristic gaze have collapsedinto each other, normalizing the imperial experience. If theso-called first British empiie was a commercial and tradingempire, the second British empire, beginning with the near-

simultaneous addition of the Indian subcontinent and loss ofthe thirteen American colonies, became increasingly atourist's empire, not just symbolized but made possible by tbeconcomitant development of the picturesque. Although somescholars have argued that the English picturesque was mainlya late-18th century aesthetic which supposedly fell tiut tjffashion during the first half of the 19th century, it should bementitmed that, contrary to such conclusions, the aestheticframework continued to prevail so that the picture.sque modeis easily recognizable in late-19th- and even 2()th-centuryphotography and advertisements.''"'

There are, of course, numerous other aspects of thepicturesque in the colonial context that need to be

explored, inclutling its relationship to labour, an issue thatwas often discussed in picturesque texts even as it wasfrequently disavowed in picturesque images.̂ ^ There are alsosome limitations to the analysis and approach offered here,which has subsumed beneath the broader picture.squc rubricthe subtle differences between the topt)graphical, thebeautiful, and the natural, or what Ann Bermingham hascalled landscapes of sense, sensibility, and sensation.^^Although there are tt^pographical elements in the work ofAngas and Glover, and although the Daniells were highlyaccomplished topographical artists, landscape engravingssuch as theirs were not intended to function simply as atopographical record. As noted earlier, the use of formalstructure, figures, and atmospheric effects transformed a realand visitable site into a picturesque repre.sentation, elevatingit to the status of a visual souvenir. And. there was anaturalistic element in British and continental picturesqueviews that is, for the most part, ntjt characteristic of imperialart.'''-' Nevertheless, Bermingham's ratitanale for adoptingthese new terms, however, tt) 'shift the focus from style tothe moral, politieal, and social values each type of landscapewas intended to awaken", as well as to provide a framewt)rkthat could accommodate works that traditit)na!ly do not fitinto the traditional categories, including amateurpnxiuction, is exactly the argument being made here.

It is hoped, however, that the examples offered above - andthe Egyptian work of David Roberts would fit as well - arerepresentative enough to suggest that the picturesque was adynamic force in the creation of the Bdtish Empire. One ofthe implications of Edward Said's work is that Orientalism - 'aWestern style for dominating, restructuring, antl havingauthority over the Orient''̂ " - made colonialism pt)ssible. Butt)ne of the limitations of the Orientalist approach is that itfocuses largely, though no longer exclusively, on the MiddleEast. Scholars have applied Said's thesis to India, but have notapplied its tenets to South Africa and Australia, and woultlhave difficulty- in doing so. The picturesque, tm the otherhand, was a much more comprehensive trope thanOrientalism, and unified the empire hy refracting localdifferences thrt")ugh a single lens. And it is revealing, in thiscontext, that the picturesque became popular at the verymoment when the British empire was undergoing its mostmassive expansion, and that the picturesque lost its vogue -and value - as the empire became more physically integratedduring the sect)nd half of ihe 19th centur>'. when the electrictelegraph and the steamship allowed for greater levels ofcommunication and control.^'

The paintings discus.sed here also make the point thatimperial repre.sentations were not exclusively concernedwith the creation of'otherness', on the presumption thai theimperial periphery was different from the imperialmetropt)lis.''- Rather, artists were also engaged in whatcultural anthropologist James Boon has called "the

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Ciïnstruction of affinities',"- Indeed, picturesquerepresentations were in large part about what Davidi'annatiine has identified as 'the domestication tif the exotic':regartling and reordering the foreign to look very much likeEngland itself,'̂ And this point needs to be underscored: theexotic is still very much present in the picturesque, butlargely stripped of its difficult otherness, allowing the viewerto remain in his or her visual comfort zone, secure in thekn( >wledge that the Ganges ltxiked basically like the Wye. Notonly were British artists in India, South Africa, and Australianever very influenced by indigenous artistic traditions; theirstyle was only minimally affected by the land,scape itself, incontrast to that of European artists working in the .so-calledOriental world,'''̂ In fact, there is considerable evidence tosuggest that painters sought out landscapes that looked - tircould be made to k)ok - like England itself.

Finally, it should he clear that the vectors of imperialism didnot work solely (or perhaps even largely) in a binary,metropole-periphery, home-abroad, fashion. As noted earlier.

8 The Falls uf Puppanassum by Thoma.s Daniel!, IH04, The BrttLsli Museum,Eteparinicnt of PrinLs and Drawings

9 The Falls of Clyde (Cora Unn) by Jacob More, 1771, The Naüüiml Gallery ofScotland

Hodges travelled through the South Pacific before he everwent to India, and numerous scholars have noted thatinfiuence; the Daniells were in South Africa before theirjourney to India; and Angas moved several times betweenEngland, South Africa, and Australm, In short, the picturesquewas not simply an aesthetic that was carried frtjin the EnglishLake District to Table Bay and the (ianges River, but developedthrough contact with non-English regions, and movedthroughout the British Empire without, at times, England evenas a reference point. And in this way it did its part to integratethe British empire, by blurring boundaries, tempering theexotic, providing a measure t>f familiarity for would-betravellers, and most of al!, homogenizing differences.

1 JR Secley. The Fjvjxtnskm ofFugtauJ.üjnclon, ltW.í, p8,

2 The literature on this point i.svoluminous. Tht niosicomprdieasivt" siiinmaiion may befound in \X1Iliam Roger tjiuis, ed,Tlx Oxford Histury of ihe Briitsbi;m(»re. 5 mh. Oxford, 1998-9, Fora brief survey ouiliniiin the varioui.meihoilologkal approaches isAiii-lrew t\»rttT, ¡iurujieaiiImperialism, 1860-191-i, London,1994, On pre-modern conceptionsof the British Empire, see DavidArmiiagc. The Itieologícal Oiifiitis of¡hi.' britisb Umpire. Cambridge, 2000,

S Andrew S Thompson, ImperialBritaiv: The Empiiv in Briiisb ¡Citiesi: I880-I9.ÍJ, Edinburgh, 2000;Antoinette Burton, ed, Miticsandlimpirv ill Victorian tiriiain. NewYiirk, 2001; Jonathan Schnt'tr,lontion I'Mi '¡'he ImperialMetmptilis. New Haven, 1999.

'I Antoinette Bunon, At the Heart of theUmpire Indians and the ColonialEncounter in late-Victorian Britain,Berkeley, 199R; Micbael Fisher, ThvTViWels of Dean .Mahomet. BL'rkeley,1997; Edward W Said, Culture andImperialism. New York, 199:i; AnnLaura Stoler and Frederick Cooper.'Bfiween Meiropole and Colony:Rfibinking a Research .Agenda,Tensions of Umpire: Colonial Culturesin a tlourj^'ois World, ed FrederickC(>o|ier and Ann Laura Stoler,Bcrkeiey, 1997, ppl-S6; Julie FCfulell and Dianne Sachko,Mac!eod, Orientalism 'IVansposcd:'Ibe impact u/lhi- colonies on Brilishculture, Altlershoi. 1998.

S It Ls telling ihat the empire figuresalmosi nowhere in Waller F.

ikiughton's The Victorian Frame ofMitul. 1830-1870. New Haven, 19S7,except bdefiy in cbapters on 'antl-inteliectualism'. 'the worship offorce', and 'pairiotism', Jobn MMafKen/ie, etI, Imperialism andFdpular Culture. Manchester, 1986,focu,ses on tbe age of highimperialism, after lHSO, as doesJamt's Mords, Fktx Britannica. TheClimax of Empire, New York. 1968,who writes of tbe Diamond Jubileebaving crystallized the newconception of Empire', p37,

6 GP C"i(XK:h, ! !nder Six Ret^zs.London, 1958. pl23.

7 John M MacKenzie, Empire and theGlobal Gaze', in The VictorianVision: hwetiting Neiv Britain,London. 2001, i)p 241-2.

H Here too the literature borders onihe unmanageable, but in tbe wakeof Etiward Said's Orientalism, NewYork. 1978, a selection of recentworks would bave to include SaraSuleri, The Rhetoric of F.ngUsh India.Chicago, 1992; Deirdre David, RuleBritannia: 'Women. Empire, andVictorian Ihivel Wiling, ttbaca,1995; lnderpal Grewal. Home antlHarem Nation, Geiuter, Empiiv, amiihe Cultures of Trat el, Durham, NC,1996; Nancy L ftixton, Writingunder Ihe Raj. New Brunswick, NJ,1999. More generally, see MaryLouise Prait, Imperial Eyes: TYavetWriting atid TYansculluration,London, 1992,

9 James R Rpn, Ficiuring the Empire.Phoiography and thv Visualization ofthe Brilish Empire. Chicago, 1997,

W Thomas Richards, Tbe CommodityCulture of Victorian England,Stanford. 1990, ppll9.-67; Stephen

Constantine, • "Bringing iheEmpire Alive": 'Ilie F:mpin¿Marketing Board and ImperialPropaganiia, 1916-23', inMacKenzie, op cil. ppl92-231, andidem, Buy & Build: The Adi^ertisingPosters of Ihe Empire MarketingBoard, l^ndon, 1986; AnneMcClinttx.k. Imperial Leather: Race.Gender and Sexuality in tbe Colonia}Contest. New York, 1995, pp2()7-31,

11 The mosi comjirehensive overviewof the field of imperial an is JeffreyAuerbach, Art and Empire', OxfordHistory of the Brilish Empire, vol Ved Robin W Winks, Oxford, 1999,pp571-83,

12 See especially Beth Fowkes Tobin,IHcluring Imperial Power ColonialSubjects in Eighteenth Century BritishMuting, Durham, NC, 1999, p2;Pratapaditya P-al antl Vidya Debijia,From Merchants to Emperors: BritishArtists and India. /757-/9J0, Itbaca,1986, 16, The most influentialwork taking ihis approach, thougbnot Focused on ibe Britisb Empire,is Linda Nochlin, 'The ImaginaryOnent'.Artiu.\menca. 71 (1983),ppîl8-31ff

13 BernartI Smiib, Euivpean Visionand the South Pacific, 2nd edn. NewHaven. 1985,

14 For example, Jane Carrutbers andMarion Arnold, The Life and \Vork ofThomas Baines.'VVjuiheîg. 1995;Giles Uliotson, TheAnifidatEmpire: The Indian Landscapes ofWilliam Hodges, Richmond, 2000,Once exception, tbough it makesno attempt to articulate a unifiedimperial vision, is Micbael Jacobs,Ihe Fuinted Voyage. Art TYavet andExploration 156^1875. London,

1995, Botb F.li/abetbjobnsífí«/.,Nm- Wortdsfrom Old: 19th CertlwyAustralian & American Uindscapes,Canberra. 1998, anil Tim Barringer,'Impedal Visions: Resptinses toindia and Africa in Victorian Anand Design', in MacKenzie, ed. TheVictorian Vision. pp31S-33, focus ontwo regions,

15 On tbe difficulties of administeringtbe empire from Lontlon, see DMYoung, The Colonial Office in IheEarly Nineteenth Century. London,1961; Jobn W Ceil, British ColonialAdministration in the Mid-NineteenlhCentury, New Haven, 1970, On thechallenges of running tbt- empirefrom tbe peripheiy, see WilliamDenison, VatietiesofVice-Rei^lUfe,2 vols, ümdon, 1870; James Pope-Hennessy, Verandah: Some Episodesin the Crown Colonies: 1867-1889,New York, 1964,

16 On [be sanitising effc-cLs of diepicturesque in British India andelsewhere, see Suleri and NcK:hlin.

17 Uvedale Price, An Essay on thePiciuresifue. London, 1794, pp9, 20;Richard Payne Knigbt. 7'heLatuUcape: A Didactic Foem in ThreeBooks. London, 179-5, pp23,31,

1« Tillotson, p55,19 Jacques Derritia. OfGrammutology,

trjns. Ga>'airt Chakravony Spivak,Baltimore, 1998,

20 On i,s,sue,s of identity and alterity,,see Martin Daunton and RickHalpern, ed. Empire and Others:British Encounters wiih IndigenousPeople.';. m)O-mo. Philadelpbia,1999,

21 Tbe idea of tbe empire as a webcomes from Tony Ballantyne,Orientalism and Race: Artwiisin and

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the BritiA Empire, HoundsmilLs,Basingstoke, 2002, ppM7. TJiephmsf 'bundles oF reiation.shi[is' isfrom Eric Wr>lf. F.umi>e and ibe Peoplewithout History', Beriieley, 19H2, p3.Recent work suggesting the limit.s ofihe '.spoketl wheel' mcxlel include.sRiclianI Grove, (Jreeri ¡mperiiilism:Colonial F.vpansioit. 7k)pical IslandEdens, and the Origins of&wironme>t!cdtsnt, idOO-tSóU.Cambridge, 199S. and SB Cook.Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth CentuiyAnato0es and Fjxhanges hetu-eentndiaantllivUind, Newbiiry, CA.¡993. On the problematic conceptof'metrópoli.-', see Stoler andCooper; Tilomas Metcalf, 'EmpireRecenterwl: India in llit- IndianOcean Arena', in Ciregory Blue,Manin Bunton, and Ralph Croi7.ier,ed. Colonialism and tbe ModernWbrW. \t1iife Plains, W, ¿mZ, ¡iiii'i-39; Douglas M Hayne^, ImperialMedicine: Patrick Mansori and theConqjuKt ofTivpicat Disease.Philadelphia, 2002; Alan lister,tmperial Networks: Creating identitiesin nineteenib-century Sotnh Africa andBritain, t/indon, 2001; CacherineHaJI, Cii'ilimigSuhfects: Colony andMetropole in ibe tinglish Imagination.m(f-l867, ChiL-ago, 2002.

22 Malcolm Andrew.s, The Search fortbeñcturesque, Stanford, 1989,pp29-30, 89; Pheroza Godrej andPauline Rohacgi, Scenic Splendours:tndia Ibrotigb the Painted Image.London, 1989. ppl9-20; MildredArcher, British Drawings in the LndiaOffice LJhiarv. vol I, London, 1969,p]9;Jo!in ,M MacKen/.ie, 'Art andIhe Emjiire', Cctmbridge I¡Utstr¿ttedHistory of the Brilisb Empire, ed PJMarshall, Cambridge, 1996. tn theinterest of not beingoverdeterministic, it should \Kempba.slzed that the picturesquewas hardly a .stable or unitaryaesthetic. Altliovigli ChristopherHussey in The tHcturescjue. Studies ina Point of View, London, 1927,established ihe picturesque as an'interregnum befween classic andromantic art. necessary in order toenable the imagination in form ihehabit of feeling through the eye'(p4), there were debates aboutwhat it was ai ihe time, as therebave been ever since. SeeAndrews, p239; Stepbcii Copleyand Peter Garside, ed, Tbe PoliticsofthePictttresque, Cambridge. 1994,esp ppl-2. 178; Kim Ian Micha.siw,'Nine Revisionist Theses on thePicturesque', Representations, 38(1992) pp7C)-100.

23 Til I Olson, esp pp43-'i3-24 It should be ¡xiinted out that

Hodges' Tabiti Revisited does notfall exclusively or perfectly witbinthe picturesque iradition,Espedally in the context of theoiher paintings he executed furtht- Aiimirjlty after his return Iriimihe South Seas, tbere is abistoricising quality to bis workthai narrated the voyage,contributed to the debate overbuman origins and civilization,and, in the absence of any heroicfigure.s, elevated tbe landscape toprominent status.

25Smilh, pp62-4.2Ó Harriet Guest, 'Curiously Marked:

TUttotïing, Masculinity, andNationality in Eighteenth-CenturyBritish Perceptions of the SouthPacific', fainting and tbe Folilics ofCulture: Nine Bssavs on Britisb Art.¡700-1850. edjohn Barrell. Oxford,1992, pplOl-34.

27 In feet, Europeans are absent ñ\in\the vast majority of Htxiges'paintings of tiie Sf»iith Padfti,notable exceptions being A view ofMatavai Bay in tbe Island of Otabeite,1776, Vieti' in Pickersgill HarbourDusky Bay Netv Zealand (cl773),and Tbe landing atErranuinga (1776). all at tbeNational Maritime Museum,l.ondon.

28 Barbara Maria Stafford, Voyage intoSubstance. Art, Science, Nature, andtbe Illustrated Tratiel Account, 1760-tmo, Cambridge. MA, 1984.

29 Ged Martin and Benjamin E Kline,'British Emigration and NewIdentities', Tbe Cambridge IllustratedHistory cftbe British F.mpire, pp254-79; Lawrence James, 'the Rise and PalloftbeBritisb Empire. New York, 1997,307-11; CAiisy\y. Imperial Meridian:'11K Hritish F-mpire and tbe mríd ¡7S0-1830, London, 1989, ppl57-8;Bemarci Rmer, TJx Lion's Share, 2ndc-dn. Uindon. 1984, pp7-8.

30 DavicI Hansen,_/o((w Clover 11767-184')) and tbe Colonial ñcturesque,Hobart, 2003.

31 John McPhee, rte/lrt q/7ofjKGlover, Melbourne, 1980, p27.

32 Alfreti W Crosby, EcologicalImperialistn: The BiologicalF.xpansionofFumpe, 900-1900,Cambridge, 1986.

33 Artbur Bowes Smyth, the surgeonalmard the iady Penryhti, one oftbe ships of the First Fleet thatsailed to Australia in 1788. wrote inhi.s journal: ''Sth January' 1788. Avery fine breeze. This night was sovet^' bot tbat 1 was obliged tothrow off tbe bedclothes. Thereare now in the cabin geraniums infull blossom and some grajievineswhich flourish very much, thereare also myrtles, bananas andother son of plant briiught friimRio de Janeiro.' See Paul G Fidkmand RJ Ryan, ed, TbeJomtiatofArthur Bowes Smyth: Surgeon, LadvPenrybn, 1787-1789, Sydney, 1979.

34 Sharon Morgan, Land Settlement inEarly Tasmania, Cambridge. 1992,p99. Foreign ¡jlants were brought loVan Dieman's Land ai such a ratethai by the time Kevd W Spicerlook his weed census in 1S78more than one hundred exoticspecieii had become naturalized.See WW' Spicer, Men Plants',ñnpers and Proceedings of the RoyalSociety' of Tasmania, Hoban, 1878.pó4. John Richardson Glover toMary Biiwles, 8 September 1833,Mitchell Library, Sytiiiey; I^ndBoard Report 753, 11 May 1831,Archives Office of Tasmania;Hansen.

35 Tim Bunybady, The Colonial Eartb.Melbourne, 2000, pp69, 90-9.

36jobns, pl22,37 Tbe most 'unpicturesque' of

Glover's paintings is Caivoodfromtbe OuseRiver (\niii), which is;ilmost anti-Claudean in itsstructure, featuring a convexrather tban concave foreground,an absence oí coulisses, and almostbarren hills in the distance. Inmost otber instances, however.Glover's work is comfortablypicturesque. The River Derwent andHoharl Town (c"1831), for example,provides a view, appropriatelyenough, of .Salvator Rosa's Glen,and is loosely based on Poussain'sAbrabam and Isaac (1655-60). Ii isalso worth noting thai Glover'sson, John Richardson Glover,cbaracterizL'd the coast nearLaunceston where they settled as

much of the Ulswater [si'c]character' and described themasses of hills ;ii 'strong andstriking, and ver)' like themanagement of Gaspard Poussin'slandscapes, ie good school for ihccbiaro-scuro light and shadowing'.See Jobn Richardson Glover toMar>' Bowles, 20 February 18.31,Mitchell Libraiy Sydney, andHansen.

38 Westall to Banks, 13 January 1804,quoted in Smith, AustralianPainting, pi 3.

39 Andrew Sayers, 'Tlie Shaping ofAustralian Landscape Painting',íVejí' Worlds from Ola, p55.

40 See also Baron Field, GeographicalMemoirs on Neiv South Wales (1825).in Bernard Smith, ed. Documents in.\rt and Tttste in Australia ¡770-19^1,Melbourne, 197S,36.

41 Thomas Watling, Letlersjrom anExile at Botany Bay to bis Aunt InDumfries, IVnrith [1794]8-9.

42 •«'atling,9; Bernard Smith,Australian Painting ¡7S8-I96(I,Melbourne, 1962,11-15, andEuropean Vision and the SoutbPacific, 182-5.

43 David H Solkin, Ricbard Wilson: TbeLandscape of Reaction, London,1982, ppl84-5.

44Sayere, p59.45 Tillotson, ppl-4. provides an

excellent formal analysis of thispainting.

46 Jacobs,pp 60-2; WG Constable,Ricbard Wilson. Cambridge, MA,pl39. According to EKWaterhouse, Hridges was 'probablytbe most accomplished painter offake 'itilsons'. See his Paittting inBritain 1530-1790, London: Penguin,1953, pi78.

47 Jacobs, pp67-8. See also MildredArcher. Early Views of India- TbePicturesejiie Journeys of Thomas andmiliam Oaniell. 1786-1794, NewYork, 19H0; Jagmoban Mahajan,PicturesífiÁe India: Sketches andtravel ofTbomas and VeilliamZtonte//, New Delhi, 1983.

48 H Diane Russell, Claude Lorrain1600-1682. VCasbington, DC, 1982,antl Htimpbre>' Wine. Claude: TbePoeliclandKape, London, 1994.More generally, see ElizabethWheeler Man waring. ItalianLandscape in Eighteenth CentwyEngland, New York, 1925.

49 Michael Rosenthal, BritishLandscape Ittinting, Oxioni. 1982,pâ4; Constable, pl79.

50 See Ibbm. esp pp81-138; JillLepore, Tbe Name of War: KingPhilip's War and the Origins ofAmerican Identity, New York, 1999;Dauntun and He!pern.

51 Constable (pl84; pi 52b) identifiedLvdford Waterfall, Tavistock a.s AWelsh WSiterfall (Pistyll Cain,Merionethshire)'. See Solkin.ppl 3^6,

52 Rosenthal, pp56-64i Tbomas Cole,•F,ssay on American Scenery', TIKAmerican Magazine 1 (1836|. ppl-12; Andrew Wilton and TimBarringei; American Sublime:Landscape Painting in the UnitedStates, 1820-1880, Princeton. 2002.

53 See Brian Dolan. ExploringEuropean Frontiers: British TravellersIn the Age of Enlightenment. Ixindon.2000', Jeremy Black, The BiitisbAhroad: Tbe Grand Thur in IheEigbteentb Century, New Haven,1997; Edward Daniel Clarke,TYavels in tbe Various Countries ofEurope. A««, and Africa, 6 vois.London, 1810-23.

54 Quoted in CP Barbier, William

Gilpin. His Drawir^s, Teacbing andTheory of tbe Picturesque, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1963, plOO. Onthe Indian picture.sque, sec Pal andDehejia, pp97-l29.

55 On the 'truth' claims that can beassociated with tbe topographicalpanorama, see Svetlana Alpers, TheArt of Describing: Dutcb Art in theSeventeentb Centuiy, Cbicagi.i, 1983,

56 Jeffrey Auerbach, An, Advenising,and Legacy of Empire'._/t)iinia/o/Popular Culture, i'i (2002), ppl-23.

57 On labour and the picturesque intbe domestic as opjxxsed toimperial context, see John Barrell,Tbe Dark Side of the Landscape: TbeRural Poor in English. Painting ¡730-18^0, Cambridge, 1980; ChristianaP;!yne, Toil and Plenty: btuiges of theAgricultural Lanelsia/K in England1780.1890, New Haven, 1993^ NancyArmstrong, 'Tlie PicttiresqueEffect; Landsta|5e and LalKiur inVicttidan Photography', exh, YaleBritish An Center, 1992. On labourand empire more generally. SeeMadliavi Kaie, ñ-agments of Empire.Cjipital, Slaver}', and IndianIndentured l^hor in the BriiishCarihhean, Philadelphia, 1998.

58 .'\nn Birmingham, Learning toDraw. Sttidies in tbe Cultural Historyof a Polite arui Useful Art, NewHaven. 2000, p78.

59 On the relationship between tbetopographical and tbe jjicture.sque,see Aniii'ew Hemingway, landscapeImagery and Urban Culture in EarlyNineteenth-Centuty Britain,Cambridge, 1992, ppÍ63-8.

6ít Said, Orientalisiii. p3.61 Tills argument Ls CTimplementary to,

rather ihan incotniiatible witb. that¡Dut forwaiil by Ann Berminghani,Land'icape and Ideology: TheHnglishRuslic Tratiition, l740-tS(iO. Berkeley,1986, e.sp iip73-83, in which sheargties that tbe picturesc¡iie was anideological respcinse' lo ihe

changing relationship ix!tweeniaiidlords and [xasants and theatteiiciatit segregation of six'ialcla.sses during the agriculturalicvoiution, and that iLs 'anti-industrialism' was iti response to theeariy years of the industrialrevolution. It is also not incomjiatlblewith Sara Suleri's allument in 7heRhetoric ofEngfisb India, Chicago,1992, that women deiiloyed tbepicturesque in oRier to minimize thethreats posed by life in the imperialsubcontineni (pp75-6).

62 Davitl Cannadine. Ornamentalisni.How the British Saw Their Empire,Uindon, 2001,pxix.

63 James A Boon, /^inities andExttvmes: Crisscrossing tbe BittersweetEtbiiotc^' of East Indies History,Hindu-Balitiese Culture, and Indo-European Allure, Chicago, 1990. Fora discussion of this pointconcerning people, rather than thelandscape, and in tbe Romanticperitid, see Harry Uebersohn,Discovering Indigenous Ntibility:

Ihcqueville, Ghamisso, andRomantic Travel Writing', AmericanHistorical Review 99:3 (1994),pp746-66.

64 Cannadine, p xix; on tbe complexintersections of the tíome.stic andthe exotic, see Guest.

(i5 Mari'Anne Stevens, ed, WeOrientalists: Delacroix to Matisse,New York, 1984, 15; JohnSweetman, The Orietital Ohsession:Islamic impiralion in Britisb andAmerican Art and Aixbitectiire ¡500-1920, Cambridge, 1988, pl3'5.

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