Agricultural History Review, Volume 63 Part 1 (2015), p. 177

Our shared vision of the English countryside has been hewn and gently shaped by centuries of engagement, from regional farming practices to radical transformations and maturing plantations. Art and experience have undoubtedly played a key role in this and Ian Waites’ work offers a new perspective on how that landscape has been represented in art over the key period of transformation 1700–1850. Whilst the landscape history of that period has its champions – one being Tom Williamson the general editor of this relatively new series from Boydell – its representation in art has perhaps been less well explored beyond the popular canon. Waites seeks to reveal lesser known artistic representations of common land: open fields, meadows heaths and woodland. The first chapter deals with the works of Tilleman, whose sketches and washes of pre-enclosure Northamptonshire show the baulks, furlongs and strips so ably studied by generations of historians and archaeologists, and of course John Clare. Consideration of George Lambert, Thomas Gainsborough’s woodland scenes and Richard Wilson’s heathlands lead into a chapter on Sandby, Cotman, Constable and William Turner of Oxford bringing a regional consideration to the representation of landscape.

Across all of these landscapes blow the winds of change. Waites draws on the historiography of landscape and agricultural change as well as art history to try and understand why these landscapes were so rarely depicted. It is a complex answer and one that must involve the relationship between art and private property as well as the more familiar territory of picturesque aesthetics and the progress of enclosure. There is also considerable complexity – in terms of tenure, use, access, and form – within the types of landscape that Waites considers. There is early on in the book a discussion of terms which arguably does not resolve itself with clarity. ‘Common field’ is preferred to ‘open field’ but this becomes confusing at times when commons themselves are being discussed. A quick flick through the well-produced illustrations, including some excellent colour plates, suggests that many of the unenclosed landscapes depicted were not actually common or open fields, but heaths, meadows and woodlands; images which drew heavily on classical models. Tellingly perhaps, it was the artists of Dutch heritage – Tilleman and DeWint – who are drawn to the open prospects of the unenclosed fields. It is perhaps significant that whilst most forms of open landscape are given excellent coverage the moorlands are peculiar by their absence. Perhaps covered under common land their ecosystems were and are distinctive, and they included a complex mix of enclosed (privately owned) and common or waste land, but were also home to industrial processes.

Waites’ book draws landscape art together with an appreciation of the landscape before the impact of parliamentary enclosure and it raises interesting questions about preconceptions of the relationship between art and the landscape and the choices made in each subject or view point. As an art historian the artistic element is naturally the stronger of the two themes, but the book reminds us that common land – land to which we all have access – is both fundamental to our picture of England and our imaginary country, and constantly under threat.