The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque

The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque

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A discussion of the ways in which the aesthetic concepts of the beautiful, sublime and the picturesque are applied to Lake District landscape: using two different sources, one from Poetry and one from Painting. |

Peter J. Moore

27/0 1//2014

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The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Picturesque.

A discussion of the ways in which the aesthetic concepts of the beautiful, sublime and the picturesque are applied to Lake District landscape: using two different sources, one from Poetry and one from Painting.

I. Two extracts from Wordsworth`s “The Prelude”. (Lavin & Donnachie; p 88-90)

II. Thomas Girtin`s, The Gorge of Watenlath with the Falls of Lodore, Derwent Water, Cumberland (1801); watercolour; 53.6 x 44.5, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Before considering the meaning of the three terms, it is necessary to define the associated term(s) “aesthetic” and “aesthetics”. Derived from the Greek – aisthanomai – to perceive or feel; both terms relate to the philosophical and artistic study of the rules and principles governing the appreciation and value of the concepts of beauty and taste. (Collins English Dictionary; MS Encarta & Routledge.)

The “Beautiful” is an aesthetic emotion, giving rise to an intense feeling of Love. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) used empirical methods to analyse “the pleasures of the imagination” (Blk 4, Unit16, p.23), in respect to beauty, concluding that beauty produced feelings of satisfaction, complacency, joy, cheerfulness and delight and that all these emotions were felt immediately. Edmund Burke (1729-97) in his “Philosophical Enquiry” (1756) attempted to categorize the common features associated with beautiful objects using the empirical methodology of “cause and effect”. The qualities Burke associated with beautiful objects were “smallness, smoothness, delicacy… that its lines exhibited continuous, seamless variation” (Blk 4, Unit16, p. 27). Burke’s ideal of Love...