Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening

Humphry Repton

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Repton published this hand-colored aquatint of the estate of Brandsbury in Middlesex (a vanished site in what is now Brondesbury, London) in Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795). One of the first estates that Repton "improved," it is depicted here with liftable flaps to show the site before and after his alternations. In this case, a fence was removed, to open up the view over rolling meadows filled with picturesque grazing cattle. Repton became England's leading landscape designer after the death of Lancelot "Capability" Brown in 1783, and his success rested partly on his skilled presentation of ideas to clients in appealing before and after watercolor drawings. Bound in morrocan leather, these sets of drawings became known as his "Red Books." The Brandsbury "Red Book" was the first of at least 300 that Repton created during his long career.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art