William Gilpin's _Tour to the Lakes_ and His Idea of "Picturesque"
IWAI Shigeaki
Ikoma Journal of Economics 15 (1) 127 - 142 2017/07
After publishing his An Essay upon Prints in 1768, William Gilpin began several tours around the British Island starting 1769. The records of his travels were published as a series later in his life. One of such writings, Tour to the Lakes published in 1786 was based on the record of his“picturesque tour"to the Lake District in 1772. While the subject of Gilpin's theory of picturesque beauty in An Essay upon Prints was artificial productions created by the masters of prints, in Tour to the Lakes his aesthetic theory was applied to evaluate the beauty of natural landscapes. The ideas of“picturesque eye"and“imagination"play important roles in his discussions of landscape beauty.