Picturesque

Gate Lodge

Here is an early photograph of a picturesque gate lodge at Castletown in Co. Kildare. In the second half of the eighteenth century people began to equate beauty in the countryside with what they encountered in art and so it came about that, for minor structures such as gate lodges, garden buildings, farmhouses, or cottages on an estate, a type of informal architecture was developed resembling the buildings which appeared in the pictures of landscape painters. This architecture was described as ‘Picturesque’. It was less formal and less expensive than the Classical style and became particularly popular in Ireland where the romantic and rocky landscape of parts of the country was thought to marry well with the irregularity of plan and outline which were essential features of the style.

Irish Architectural Archives

Gate Lodge
Irish Architectural Archives

Gate Lodge

Here is an early photograph of a picturesque gate lodge at Castletown in Co. Kildare. In the second half of the eighteenth century people began to equate beauty in the countryside with what they encountered in art and so it came about that, for minor structures such as gate lodges, garden buildings, farmhouses, or cottages on an estate, a type of informal architecture was developed resembling the buildings which appeared in the pictures of landscape painters. This architecture was described as ‘Picturesque’. It was less formal and less expensive than the Classical style and became particularly popular in Ireland where the romantic and rocky landscape of parts of the country was thought to marry well with the irregularity of plan and outline which were essential features of the style.

Irish Architectural Archives

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In the second half of the eighteenth century philosophers throughout Europe became interested in what made people think that an object, or a natural view, was beautiful or ugly. Aesthetic analysis became a fashionable activity to which the Irish philosopher and politician Edmund Burke made an important contribution when he published 'A philosophical inquiry into the origin of our ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful' in 1756. His book was widely read. The sons of noblemen and wealthy land owners, who travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour to complete their education, frequently collected paintings of landscapes and Italian views, and it became common to assess the local scenery in terms of how much it resembled the paintings of the most admired landscape artists such as Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorraine.

People began to equate beauty in the countryside with what they encountered in art and so it came about that, for minor structures such as gate lodges, garden buildings, farmhouses, or cottages on an estate, a type of informal architecture was developed resembling the buildings which appeared in the pictures of landscape painters. This architecture was described as 'Picturesque'. It was less formal and less expensive than the Classical style and became particularly popular in Ireland where the romantic and rocky landscape of parts of the country was thought to marry well with the irregularity of plan and outline which were essential features of the style.