Glossary · P
Picturesque
Also called the picturesque
In the late eighteenth century, the quality of a scene that would make a picture; for Uvedale Price (1794), a distinct aesthetic quality made of roughness, sudden variation and irregularity, between the beautiful and the sublime.
See also: Claude glass, Cottage orné
Rules that use the word
Roughness and sudden variation. Value in a landscape the qualities painters seek, roughness, sudden variation and irregularity, which are neither beautiful nor sublime but picturesque; keep old trees, broken banks and intricate views, and do not smooth everything into lawn and clump.
Let the plan make the picturesque. Arrange a building for its uses first and let its outline follow: gables, bays, chimneys and towers go where the rooms behind need them. Never contrive irregularity for effect, and never force a symmetrical front on an unsymmetrical plan.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Enlightenment and Revival, Gardens and Landscape.
A feature of Gothic Revival, Victorian architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Peristyle · Perpendicular tracery · Perron · Piano nobile · Pietra dura · Pilaster · Pilotis · Pinnacle