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"Gardens are where man and nature meet. They change by the hour, day to day, and with the seasons. They carry associations about the status, approach to life, and sometimes even the political affiliations of their creators. Gardens may be intended for public enjoyment or private delight; they may be open to the masses or closed to all but a chosen few. They may be places of scientific study, havens for the solitary thinker, spaces for flirtation and for love.

Presented with its many manifestations, artists have looked at the garden in different ways, extracting and emphasising those facets unique to their culture and their age. At the same time individual elements drawn from the garden, whether architectural or botanical, have at certain periods come to the fore and taken their place in the decorative arts of western Europe. This exhibition explores the ways in which the garden inspired artists and craftsmen between 1500 and the early twentieth century."

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/painting-paradise/the-queens-gallery-buckingham-palace/painting-paradise-the-art-of-the-garden?language=ru

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"Gainsborough’s inspiration for this portrait was the rococo garden scenes of Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684 – 1721), known as fêtes galantes. These paintings set elegant contemporary figures within natural, park-like settings free from the constraints of court and society. Here, the contemporary landscape garden at Cumberland Lodge has been transformed by Gainsborough into a wooded haven, suggesting the pleasures of the Garden of Love."

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"The landscape garden was England’s greatest cultural export of the eighteenth century. Topiary, symmetry and parterres fell out of fashion, and as nature came to be seen as the ideal, the garden developed into a sequence of unfolding views, meaning that it was less effectively visualised from above. The aerial view gave way to sequences of oil paintings or engravings providing views of the garden at ground level. Images of this new form of garden were crucial to how the rest of Europe perceived England and to the strong sense of identity that came with the development of this new national style. As a consequence, printed images of the garden proliferated to meet both national and international demand, fed by the new phenomenon of garden tourism.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the garden had become a means to express some of the main preoccupations of Enlightenment thought. It was also, more than ever before, a social stage on which to see and be seen. Polite society now gathered in the garden, as the public pleasure garden and the Mall developed as spaces for exercise, festivities and spectacle. Meanwhile, as the public and private functions of the garden diverged, the garden retreat served both as a haven for contemplation and reverie and also as the leisure garden setting for the fête champêtre."

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"The subject of winged putti or boys playing in apple trees or vines trained on pergolas appeared frequently in tapestries between c.1540 and 1670. This is one of a four-part series of The Playing Boys woven in England at the Mortlake tapestry works in the mid-seventeenth century. English patrons may have found the image of fruitfulness and harmony that these tapestries presented particularly appealing after the turmoil of the Civil War. Raphael was the first artist to popularise this type of tapestry design during the Renaissance, but the inspiration for this particular set may derive from designs produced by Giulio Romano in Mantua c.1540 – 5. The theme itself was classical in origin, and derived from the Eikones of Philostratus, which described a group of Neapolitan paintings of the third century ad, including one showing cupids playing in a fruit garden. The motif also appeared in contemporary Renaissance literature, such as Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili."

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"Ovid’s Metamorphoses proved a particularly rich source of reference for motifs and ideas for the Renaissance garden. The transformations of the characters described in Ovid’s narrative took place against a contrived landscape setting. Although the text made no mention of the garden, these artificial landscapes were usually shown in contemporary illustrations as formal Italianate gardens, ornamented with statuary and topiary."

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"A gondola on the right, and the recognisable architecture of Piazza San Marco in the distance, establish the setting for this fantastical island maze as Venice. Although the scene appears imaginary, hedge mazes had become an established feature of the Italian Renaissance garden by the late sixteenth century, and were a popular form of courtly diversion and entertainment. Here, the maze is the setting for feasting and frolicking. These activities hint at the allegorical message of the painting, which warns that it can be as difficult to escape from the ensnaring pleasures of the senses as to find the path out of a maze."

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"In the late fifteenth century a new concept of the garden began to emerge in Renaissance Europe. Based on a preoccupation with the classical garden, the way of organising plant material was now governed by a formal, geometric approach, and ornament in the garden was enriched by the re-introduction of a range of forms from antiquity. This heralded the creation of gardens of unmatched splendour. The notion took hold that magnificent gardens could enhance the prestige and status of monarchs and princes, and with this came the first accurate depictions of existing gardens in Western art.

Fantasy and reality were closely linked in the Renaissance garden and Italy was the crucible for the theatrical and awe-inspiring new effects which were eagerly sought after in gardens throughout Europe. Inspiration came from both classical mythology and contemporary Italian literary sources. The extraordinary – water mazes, elaborate topiary or obelisks – appeared in Renaissance art alongside the commonplace – pergolas and knots."

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"The Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer was the most successful printmaker working in Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century. He returned repeatedly to the theme of the Virgin and Child in his etchings, often using the imagery of the enclosed garden (hortus conclusus) in a sparing form. In each of these etchings (RCIN 800044; 800045; 800052) a pole fence and a turf bench indicate that the setting is a garden."

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"The Nuremberg artists Michael Wolgemut (c.1434/7 – 1519) and Wilhelm Pleyedenwurff (c.1450 – 94) who produced this woodcut followed the description of the Garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis closely. The Tree of Knowledge (centre) is presented as an apple tree, and the Tree of Life (right) as the distinctive Dragon tree (Draecena). The Dragon tree exuded a form of resin which was believed to have life-giving properties. The Fountain of Life is depicted in the form of a medieval garden fountain, with water spouting from a carved mask."

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"Rembrandt depicts the scene described in St John’s Gospel (21:17) when Mary Magdalene encounters the resurrected figure of Christ and mistakes him for a gardener. Christ appears with the shovel, broad-brimmed hat and pruning knife that identify him as a gardener. A neatly clipped box hedge in the foreground establishes the setting as a garden, and emphasises the true message of the painting which was that Christ the gardener would provide the way from the earthly garden to the heavenly garden of Paradise."