'A Secure Delight': Engravings of Landscape Gardens from Vitruvius Britannicus (1739)
Until 11 Jul 2008
In the Library Print Room
FREE
![John Rocque (c.1704-1762), A Plan of the Gardens and View of the Buildings … at Esha [i.e. Esher], Surrey, 1737.](http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/images/width370/pl006218-1442.jpg "John Rocque (c.1704-1762), A Plan of the Gardens and View of the Buildings … at Esha [i.e. Esher], Surrey, 1737.")
John Rocque (c.1704-1762), A Plan of the Gardens and View of the Buildings … at Esha [i.e. Esher], Surrey, 1737. Etching
This series of illustrated garden plans by the Huguenot-born landscape surveyor John Rocque (c.1704-1762) is the most important surviving visual record we have of the great aristocratic gardens of early 18th-century Britain.
They capture a key moment in garden history, revealing in a unique way how the painter-architect William Kent (1685-1748) and his patrons were laying the foundations of a new kind of landscape garden - arguably this country's most distinctive and widely-imitated contribution to the visual arts.
Opening times
10am-1pm, 2pm-5pm Tuesday to Friday
Closed Saturday to Monday
