Janet Boulton Two Gardens
Twenty years ago, Janet Boulton sought inspiration for her new garden in
Abingdon and visited the plantsperson's paradise created by Anne Dexter at
Beechcroft Road in Oxford. Wishing to spend longer studying the garden, she
impulsively asked permission to return - to make paintings. An ideal cover for not
seeming to be loitering idly!
Janet Boulton is a watercolourist. Until recently she has mostly painted
gardens in the tradition of plein air. Working outside from the subject
provides an unique opportunity to experience and record space and weather.
This is in itself most pleasurable and complements her studio-based practice
as a painter of still life.1
Nevertheless, the vagaries of the English climate and the consequent
impossibility of making plans led to her working exclusively in Italian
gardens.2 Her first series of paintings at the Villa La Pietra were made in
the years 1984-92 during the lifetime of Sir Harold Acton.3 After his death
in 1994, New York University, who inherited the estate, gave her permission
to continue painting there.
Her first visit to Little Sparta was on a wet July day in 1993 whilst
holidaying in Scotland. With the identical impulse that initially set her on
the road to painting gardens, she asked Ian Hamilton Finlay's permission to
return to make drawings. Her resolve to paint only Italian gardens was quite
forgotten. In November that year she made the first of so many subsequent
visits that Dr Finlay has referred to her as the 'sometimes resident artist
at Little Sparta'.
Since Janet Boulton's response to Villa la Pietra and Little Sparta has been
strongly instinctive, a conscious study of the similarities between them is
revealing. They are gardens greatly contrasting in character, yet there are
many important parallels.
Both are created by innovative artists who are inspired by the art of Greece
and Rome and use sculpture in relation to landscape and plantings of trees
and shrubs. In each a balance is achieved between grandeur and simplicity,
gravity and humour, artefact and nature.
To be more specific, both gardens are situated at the end of long drives and
are adjacent to working farms. Each celebrates horticulture and its rustic
association with husbandry and the simple life. This is demonstrated in the
orchards and the walled garden at La Pietra,,and the Allotment and Kailyard at
Little Sparta. There are further parallels in the resouceful harnessing of water for
fountains, irrigation and pools, and in the important part wild flowers play.
Lastly there is the similarity between the delightful, evocative atmospheres
of the Teatro Verde in Italy and the Roman Garden in Scotland, the latter
being a Tribute to the Villa d'Este and a miniature 'theatre of war'.
From a practical aspect there are considerable differences in painting the
gardens. Planning ahead is possible in Florence, where the weather is
consistent and predictable: finding the most appropriate light for each
subject can be a leisurely affair. On occasion Janet Boulton takes work back
to complete in the following year.
At Little Sparta no such certainties exist. Each visit is a new beginning
and each hour presents a different challenge. Whatever the season, the
rain, high winds and occasionally freezing temperatures are great
inhibitors. The impracticality of relying on completing work in the open air
has resulted in her adapting her method of working. A number of the works in
this exhibition have been made in her studio from plein air material and
photographs.
There are other ways in which working conditions have influenced her
interpretation of the gardens. Early on, the limonaia at La Pietra and the
Temple to Apollo at Little Sparta became refuges from extremes of weather.
Both these buildings contain beautiful classical and allegorical statues
surrounded by a fascinating array of objects relating to the working life of
the gardens, as shown in the paintings. The Boat Window series from Little
Sparta also results from being confined indoors.
In repeated visits to Scotland she has gained greater insight into the vital
part that light plays when interacting with the sculpture in its setting at
Little Sparta. For instance, she was lucky enough to see a freak storm above
the Grotto to Aeneas and Dido and to watch a cool spring sunset behind the
Tribute to Caspar David Friedrich. Last January she painted Laugier's Hut,
which was standing in snow against a perfect blue sky.
At Villa La Pietra the extensive restoration generates a vibrant, purposeful
atmosphere. The process of replanting has revealed the original 'bones' of
the garden and opened new vistas. The experiments in the pomario and the
newly renovated facade of the Villa have inspired many of the works in this exhibition.
Janet Boulton has been doubly rewarded by concentrating solely on these two
original and dynamic neo-classical gardens. She has had the opportunity to
make paintings, and at the same time pursue her interest in all things
related to gardening and garden history.The paintings in this exhibition
form part of an ongoing study.
Villa La Pietra
Villa La Pietra is situated north of Florence at 120, Via Bolognese. It was
originally built in the early C15th and its name 'the stone' derives from
the milestone that once marked its distance from the old city gate of San
Gallo. Two C17th lodges flank the fine entrance gates, beyond which a long
avenue of cypresses traverses a small unspoilt valley leading to the
imposing NW-facing facade. In 1460 it was bought by Francesco Sassetti, the
leading Florentine banker to Cosimo de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent.
The Capponis then acquired the estate in 1547 from Francesco's heirs and
kept it in the family for the next three centuries. In the C17th it was
Cardinal Luigi Capponi who undertook the extensive rebuilding of the villa
in a restrained Tuscan Baroque style. However, much of the C15th structure
was retained and some of the rooms remain, to this day, pure Quattrocento.
Arthur and Hortense Acton bought the property at the beginning of the C20th
and work began on the garden in 1904. A clear plan of the Villa La Pietra as
it was in the C15th is reproduced in Giorgio Vasari Junior's Plans for
Churches, Palaces and Vills of Tuscany (1598). Of the two gardens mentioned
in Vasari Junior's notes only the walls of the giardino segreto remained.
The giardino grande, situated behind the Villa, was largely demolished in
the C19th to make way for a then fashionable English Landscape garden. It
was in this area, on a south facing slope, that Arthur Acton set out to
reinvent the garden as he imagined it may have been at the time of the
Renaissance. Its central axis faces Vallombrosa southward; below in the
valley it is possible to see the Duomo and Giotto's bell tower rising up
from the centre of Florence.
He laid it out in a succession of balustraded terraces, parterres,
colonnaded walks and enclosed grass spaces complete with a Teatro Verde.
Then, with a seemingly unerring instinct for composition and a painterly
sense of light and shade, he installed his collection of C17th and C18th
statuary. The four pairs of exquisite figures depicting rustic characters
(placed in the wings of the 'green theatre') by the Venetian sculptor
Francesco Bonazza, and the stone Colossus by Orazio Marinale, represent but
a small part of an outstanding collection of garden sculpture.
The walled kitchen garden (lemon garden, or pomario) attached to the
north-facing side of the Villa was enlarged by Cardinal Capponi in 1690 when
he also built the limonaia. A sense of timelessness is reinforced by the
large ornate gateways, rocaille work and marble busts looking down onto a
central fountain.The eight ordered beds filled with vegetables, flowers and
ancient fruit trees, surrounded by clipped box and huge pots of lemon trees,
still continue to provide produce for the occupants of the estate.
Judging from photographs taken of the garden when it reached its maturity in
the 1930s, theatricality and impeccable green severity were among its most
distinguishing characteristics.
After Arthur Acton's death in 1953 his son, the historian and aesthete Sir
Harold Acton, became custodian of the estate. During these years, although
no changes were made to the essential form, the garden gradually took on a
softer character. The odd tree seeded and grew large; pink ivy-leafed
geraniums spilled from pots; zinnias appeared in the lower parterres;
hibiscus and hydrangea were placed on the terrace at the back of the Villa.
Also the statuary and stonework must have suffered from the depredations of
wartime occupation and present-day pollution.
Sir Harold bequeathed the Villa and its estate to New York University and
after his death in February 1994 an ambitious long term restoration
programme was inaugurated and is now in progress. Kim Wilkie Associates are
responsible for the gardens and it is their plan to restore it to its mature
glory of the 1930s.
Georgina Masson in her book Italian Gardens (Thames and Hudson, 1961),
says in the entry for La Pietra that 'the extensive use of topiary and the
introduction of motifs in the classical style and Venetian Garden sculpture
has given the garden a curiously individual character. It can perhaps best
be described as a foreigner's conception of an ideal Italian garden, but as
such it is not at all out of place in a city which is one of the meccas of
the foreign traveller in Italy'.
Who knows how differently this great neo-classical garden and its creator
will be assessed, once the current restoration is completed and mature? It
awaits a monograph.
Little Sparta
'In most contemporary art that I see, the artists never seem to love
anything, but a lot of my work proceeds frankly from love and affection.' IHF
Ian Hamilton Finlay (b 1925) became known in the 1960s as Britain's foremost
concrete poet. He had written plays, short stories and poems before
discovering a kinship with the international avant-garde. His magazine
'Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.,' and the Wild Hawthorn Press4 did much to promote
the movement, both at home and abroad.
In 1966 he settled with his family at Stonypath, 25 miles south west of
Edinburgh. It was a near-derelict croft surrounded by moorland and
pasture, perched over 1000 feet up in the Pentland Hills. He began the five
acre garden the following year and re-named it Little Sparta in about 1980.
The explanation for this name is an initiation into the rich sources,
complexity and humour contained in so many of the works in the garden. As
'Sparta' it stands opposed to Edinburgh, 'The Athens of the North', and
Little recognises its smallness. The inhabitants of the Cordeliers district
of French Revolutionary Paris re-named their quarter 'Little Sparta' to
honour the principled austerity Sparta seemed to share with radical,
neo-classical France.
To find a convincing precedent for Little Sparta one must look back to the
work of two C18th neo-classical poet gardeners, Alexander Pope and William
Shenstone, whose gardens were considered controversial in their time.
Pope's garden at Twickenham (now mostly lost, but well-documented) was more
than simply a retreat for meditation. It was a celebration of Antique Roman
virtues and rustic simplicity and also a commentary and counter-attack on
the political and cultural corruption that had spread through English
society in the eighteenth century.
In Shenstone's garden at The Leasowes in Warwickshire, ' The visitor
followed a prescribed route which presented scenes of grandeur, beauty and
variety. Latin inscriptions and dedications invoked classical associations,
and urns were dedicated to the memory of friends to provide a desirable
tinge of melancholy. There were also modest garden buildings, numerous
cascades and waterfalls and the picturesque ruins of the priory.'5
Many features of Shenstone's garden are echoed at Little Sparta where there
is an intense concentration of ideas and images in the form of inscriptions
and symbolic objects. The visitor 'finds their own way' through the garden;
there is no single narrative or argument, but more a series of ideas or
epiphanies.
In the Front Garden there is a small grove containing the Roman Garden,
where six stone sculptures depicting WWII boats are surrounded by the
blue-green Hosta fortunei in terracotta pots. Farm buildings behind the
cottage have been converted to temples to Apollo, and Philemon and Baucis.
In the adjacent Woodland Garden an evocative stone pyramid stands secluded
amongst ash, elder and cypress as a Tribute to Caspar David Friedrich.
Nearby a small gate leads to a much wider landscape, where the visitor can
lose all sense of scale and time.
One might take the route along a wooded path, bordering two pools connected
by a small aqueduct - the Tribute to Corot. Set amongst silvery willows, it
uncannily echoes the colour, texture and light of Corot's paintings of Rome
in the C19th. Further on, large carved stone hand-grenades decorate two
brick columns called Hypothetical Gateway to an Academy of Mars. From here
there is an open view across Lochan Eck, an impressive stretch of water
graced by five black swans. On the heathery hillside above the Lochan lie
the famous eleven granite blocks inscribed THE / PRESENT / ORDER / IS / THE
/ DISORDER / OF / THE / FUTURE / SAINT-/ JUST.
The absorbing manner in which the garden constantly connects with the
expanse of landscape and sky gives a sensation of a much larger space. Ian
Hamilton Finlay has continued to adapt the natural environment in this way,
introducing artefacts with a great sense of lyricism and faultless
composition. The recently developed Parkland features streams and ponds and
a proliferation of wild plants. Inscribed bridges, a Sheepfold quoting
Virgil, and a bronze wheelbarrow honouring Shenstone are amongst the many
new artefacts placed there.
Finlay is widely known amongst artists, writers and craftspeople and many of
the works in the garden are made in collaboration with them. He believes
strongly in the dimensions shared by art and the natural world and deplores
the values of a secular society. One single premise on which his art stands
is that Art and Ethics are indivisible.
There are a number of beautifully illustrated books and many scholarly and
imaginative texts devoted to the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay. These cover
the garden, exhibitions, and commissions in the public and private domain in
Europe and North America.
The Little Sparta Trust was set up in 1995 to protect the long term future
of this unique and fragile garden. To quote Sir Roy Strong, 'To be denied
access to Little Sparta is to be cut off from one of the great garden
inspirations of our age.'6
NOTES
1. IHF in a letter to Graeme Murray, the Scottish gallerist, Nov. 3 1972
'How nice pure watercolour (sans body colour) is! It is like a kind of prescription
for the ideal life: Observation, Simplification, Resolution. Or something like that.'
2. Apart from an excursion to Rome and its environs (painting in the Villa d'Este
in Tivoli and the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati) she spent most time in and around
Florence. Memorable weeks were spent at Villa I Tatti, the Villa Gamberaia
at Settignano and the Villa Le Balze on the Via Vecchia Fiesolana. (She continues
to study the Vasca dell'Isola in the Boboli Gardens).
Her early days in the garden world are described by Jane Brown
in an essay entitled 'A Painter's Progress into the Garden'.
(Monograph. Janet Boulton 1985 -91. Mercury Graphics)
3. JB recalls a conversation she had with Sir Harold Acton when they were discussing
his concerns over security and staff. Why, she asked, was he so kind as to allow her to
continue painting there? He replied, 'Because I know you love the garden.'
4. P.O.T.H., edited by IHF 1961-1967 Wild Hawthorn Press is IHF's own imprint
5. Oxford Dictionary of Gardens (OUP 1986, p 331)
6. Garden Party (Frances Lincoln 2000)
Selected Further Reading
Villa La Pietra
The Villas of Tuscany .Harold Acton (Thames and Hudson 1973)
Oxford, China and Italy. Writings in Honour of Sir Harold Acton.
Edited E. Chaney and N. Richie (Thames and Hudson 1984)
A Last Fantasy in Florence. D. Plante (New Yorker, July 10 1995)
Little Sparta
Ian Hamilton Finlay. A Visual Primer. Yves Abrioux (Reaktion Books 1985)
Ian Hamilton Finlay. Edited by A. Finlay (Chapman 78-79 1994)
Wood Notes Wild. Essays on the Poetry and Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Edited by A. Finlay (Polygon 1995)
Ian Hamilton Finlay. Works in Europe 1972 -1995. (Cantz 1995)
Selected Ponds. Photographs of the garden by David Paterson (West Coast
Poetry Review 1976)
Little Sparta A Portrait of the Garden. Photographs by Robin Gillanders
(Scottish National Portrait Gallery 1998)
New Arcadians Journal. Edited by Patrick Eyres. Volume numbers: 10, 15, 23
and 24
Hortus Edited by David Wheeler. Essays by Dawn MacLeod. Volume numbers: 12
and 13
The Little Sparta Trust
Jessie Sheeler, The Secretary, The Little Sparta Trust, Auchenshore,
Auchencairn, Castle Douglas, Galloway, Scotland DG7 1QZ
Acknowledgments
Janet Boulton wishes to thank Dr Robert Berne, Vice President of Academic
and Health Affairs, New York University; all the staff at Villa La Pietra;
Dr Ian Hamilton Finlay and Pia Maria Simig at Little Sparta. |
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