William Andrews Nesfield and the origins of the landscape architect

Nina Antonetti

Landscape History, 2012, vol. 33, issue 1, 69-86

Abstract: This article challenges the assumption that Frederick Law Olmsted was the first to call himself a landscape architect in the 1860s. Systematic study of archival records establishes that William Andrews Nesfield (1794–1881), an overlooked but pivotal practitioner in Victorian England, used the title as early as 1849. Dismissed by many historians as a revivalist of parterres and Italianate terraces, Nesfield encouraged the burgeoning field of landscape architecture by elevating the vocational landscape designer to professional landscape architect, expanding his audience from aristocratic clientele to the general public, and shifting his focus from rural estates to urban and suburban sites. That Olmsted stands in a landscape by Nesfield, as identified by Antonetti, when musing on his future profession, further demonstrates that Nesfield is an essential addition to the landscape studies canon. That Nesfield had broad disciplinary training and practiced a more rigorously comprehensive style of design than traditional garden design sheds new light on the origins of landscape architecture and its more expansive role in landscape studies.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01433768.2012.671037 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rlshxx:v:33:y:2012:i:1:p:69-86

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rlsh20

DOI: 10.1080/01433768.2012.671037

Access Statistics for this article

Landscape History is currently edited by Dr Della Hooke

More articles in Landscape History from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().