- Museum number
- 1960,0708.1
- Description
-
Cascade at Hestercombe; in a wooded landscape with figures
Brush drawing in grey and brown wash, over graphite
- Production date
- 1720-1791
- Dimensions
-
Height: 232 millimetres
-
Width: 281 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See Noble Art exh. catalogue
Earlier reference: Iolo Williams, British Watercolours, p. 232-3; Hammelmann and boase, 'Book Illustrators in 18th century England', pp. 23-4
K Sloan, Noble Art 2000
In his Tour in the West of England (1787), Lord Palmerston visited Hestercombe, noting nothing remarkable in the house, but behind it was a valley with a wooded stream along which Bampfylde had formed walks and 'disported sets with good Taste of Judgement.' He continued:
But the principle Beauty and striking Feature of the Place is a Cascade of a considerable height which falls abruptly down a Rock in the middle of a thick Wood. It is a most romantick and beautiful object from several parts of the Ground, and is on the whole one of the best Things of the Mind I have seen in the territory of any private Person.(quoted in White, p.7)
Records of the manor at Hestercombe near Taunton in Somerset predate the Norman Conquest and it remained in the hands of the de la Warre family from 1391 until 1718 when Margaret Warre married John Bampfylde. The surrounding lands were mainly deer park until the end of the 17th century when Margaret's father Sir Francis Warre began developing the combe garden, adding a pond and hedges. In the 1720s, John Bampfylde rebuilt the front of the house in a Palladian style and paid various gardeners for designs. When he inherited it in 1750, Bampfylde made his own additions to the house and combe gardens, soon acquiring a reputation, according to William Shenstone, as a man 'whose fortune, person, figure and accomplishments can hardly leave him long unnoticed in any place where he resides'. The poet described Bampfylde in this manner when he was pressed by Edward Knight, Bampfylde's brother-in-law to accompany him on a visit to Hestercombe in 1758. It seems as if the visit never took place, but four years later Bampfylde was inspired by a visit to the gardens and waterfall the poet had created at The Leasowes to build his own cascade at Hestercombe.
When Edward Knight visited Hestercombe in 1761, the garden already contained a 'Witch or Root House', an octagonal summer house, terrace and chinese seat, with views down the water to Taunton Vale, and a 'Rock' with lawn and beeches before it and a gothic seat with views into the vales. The 'Rock' was undoubtedly the cliff face down which the cascade was to fall the following year. George Lambert, who may have been one of Bampfylde's tutors in painting (cat. 64) had painted a view of 'A Rock in a Garden' at Hestercombe in the 1750s. Bampfylde probably made a series of studies of the cascade: a slightly larger vertical watercolour at the V&A shows the falls as they would look standing in the position of the man on the right of the present study in brown wash.
Arthur Young visited in 1771, and described many of the features of the gardens including the 'Witch or Root House', decorated with paintings of a cat, witch, snakes and an owl by Bampfylde and ended with a quote from another visitor:
'O'er Bampfield's woods by various nature grac'd,
A witch presides! - but then that witch is TASTE'
The gardens were the subject of a popular book by Richard Graves, Columella published in 1779, mistakenly often thought to refer to The Leasowes. It explored the conflict between natural and horticultural gardens and reflected the development of Bampfylde's own taste as it moved towards the natural and reflected the developments in the Picturesque, later elaborated by Uvedale Price (see cat. 117) and Bampfylde's wife's cousin, Richard Payne Knight (cat. 126).
From 1904-10 Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll laid down formal gardens and an orangery to the east of the house. The grounds were neglected for most of this century, but in 1995 the Hestercombe Gardens Project was set up to secure and restore Bampfylde's landscape gardens and re-open them to the public as they were during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Literature: White passim
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2000 May-Sep, BM P&D, 'A Noble Art', no.65
- Acquisition date
- 1960
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1960,0708.1