The Garden Museum’s Acquisition of the Nesfield Archive
The Garden Museum’s recent acquisition of the Nesfield family archive is a thrilling coup. ‘It’s the first time a historic garden archive has ever come up for sale’ says Christopher Woodward, the director of the Garden Museum. William Andrews Nesfield (1793-1881) was an eminent 19th century garden designer and together with his sons, William Eden and Arthur Markham they were responsible for more than 250 landscapes all over England between 1840 and the 1870s.
The archive contains drawings and plans relating to many important country houses such as Alnwick Castle, Northumberland and Witley Court, Worcestershire, Crewe Hall, Cheshire, Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Castle Howard, several vistas at Kew Gardens, the parterres along the Avenue Gardens at Regent’s Park as well as scores of watercolours, drawings of ornaments including urns and statuary, terraces and numerous studies of trees. It includes: 13 folders of garden designs, mostly ground plans and parterre designs; more than 800 watercolours, notebooks and albums, a volume of biographical reminiscences, printed books (many of them annotated with Nesfield’s strongly held opinions) and a set of county maps marked with the locations of all the commissions. In addition, there are journals and gardening notebooks of his son Arthur Markham Nesfield, who was becoming established as a designer in his own right but sadly met an untimely demise – whilst riding towards St. John’s Wood, his horse bolted and he died almost instantly.
The famous vast Perseus and Andromeda fountain at Witley Court, Worcestershire. Carved in stone by James Forsyth. It was reputed to be the largest in Europe at the time,. Eighteen thousand litres of water were pumped from the nearby Hundred Pool to a reservoir a kilometre away and thirty metres above the level of the mansion to feed the fountain.
A treasure trove waiting to be catalogued, the archive would make an exciting project for a PhD student. One wonders how the archive stayed intact over the years? It even includes railway maps.’ W.A. loved trains’, his great great niece Gabriel Nesfield tells me. Someone in the family must have recognised the importance of all the documents and the associated papers. The archive has descended through the family via Markham’s descendants in Australia.
A design for Orwell Park, Suffolk.
I have a particular interest in Markham as he was known, because we still have his plan for the gardens here at Doddington Place. They were commissioned by Sir John Croft Bt in 1870 the first owner and builder of the house.
Christopher first got wind of the Nesfield archive about a decade ago. At the time he had a girlfriend working at Sotheby’s who alerted him ‘Why don’t you come and look at it. It’s to Sotheby’s credit that they sold the archive as one, they could easily have broken it up.
From to time Christopher would ask the late Shirley Evans, author of Masters of their Craft: The Art, Architecture and Garden Design of the Nesfields, ‘Have you heard anything about the archive?
The purchase was made possible by grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Fund, the Art Fund and the Friends of National Libraries.
A design for a ‘dressed ground in a geometric arrangement’ for Regent’s Park.
Material from the Nesfield Archive will be available to view in the Foyle Study Room by appointment in the week. Pls contact: archives@gardenmuseum.org.uk
I spent a happy day marvelling at just a mere fraction of the designs (far too much to see in one day) and watercolours. And most amusingly W.A.’s trenchant pencil annotations in the margins of Practical Hints upon Landscape Gardens by William S. Gilpin. For example – ‘It is an unaccountable wonder how owners can be found who employ snobs & yet such is the case e.g. Paxton and the Birkenhead man….’
Nesfield’s copy of Practical Hints upon Landscape Gardening by William S. Gilpin is littered with his pencil annotations. He held very strong views.
W.A. Nesfield began his career as a soldier serving in the Peninsular War and then in Canada during the war of 1812 resigning his commission in 1818 to take up watercolour painting as a profession. He spent the next three years painting and sketching around Brancepeth, Co. Durham living with his family.
One of the many very accomplished watercolours by William Nesfield in the archive. John Ruskin wrote of his work – ‘Nesfield is a man of extraordinary feeling, both for the management of the changeful spray of mist, just in its curves and contours, and unequalled in colour except for Turner. None of our watercolour painters can approach him in the management of the variable hues of clear water over weeded rocks.
A country house in Devon
Detail of a drawing of Alnwick Castle, Northumberland
In 1821 young William along with his cousin, Anthony Salvin, the architect, moved to London. In years to come, William was to design several schemes for projects that Salvin’s was involved in including Alnwick Castle, which he remodelled for the Duke of Northumberland.
William rapidly gained acclaim for his paintings being elected to the Society of Watercolour Painters in June 1823. He had a lifelong interest in the Picturesque. Visiting a potential client’s house he spent time walking around the estate observing how the house sat in the landscape, the approach to it, the positioning of the lodges paying careful attention to trees. The archive contains many fine drawings of trees.
William is associated with the revival of the parterre-de-broderie, the fashion for them had been swept away by the vogue for landscaped parks beloved by Capability Brown and his ilk.
Here he sums up his approach writing to a client John Manners Sutton:
‘The idea of a parterre was regulated according to the size of the house and dealt with artificially as art could desire by means of grass slopes, terraces, panels, verges, sculpture, fountains, box embroidery, flowers and other exotics. The details should invariably be worked into rich compartments, the main and flanking centres of which should be formed upon the most important windows or doors according to circumstances.’
