“Scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic meadows, and rustic retreats suitable for solitary contemplation are just a few of the alluring naturalistic features of gardens created in the Romantic spirit. Landscape designers of the Romantic era sought to express the inherent beauty of nature in opposition to the strictly symmetrical, formal gardens favored by aristocrats of the old regime. ” –Art Daily

The Romantics looked to nature as a liberating force, a source of sensual pleasure, moral instruction, religious insight, and artistic inspiration.  This important episode in artistic and cultural history is the subject of Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design, on view from May 21 through August 29, 2010, at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York. The exhibition features approximately ninety texts and outstanding works of art, providing an overview of ideas championed by the Romantics and also implemented by them in private estates and public parks in Europe and the United States.

There are before and after’s by Humphry Repton (1752–1818).  Repton was the leading landscape architect of his time (the “Before and After” was a technique that he developed).  Additionally, there is  “entry no. 33,” –  the proposals  of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for the design of Central Park.  They prepared presentation boards with the “present outlines” in photographs attributed to Mathew Brady and the “effect proposed” in oil sketches made by Vaux.   Not just and exhibition on Romanitcism, it sounds like an excting and interesting tour of garden design technique history.