This painting of Painshill Park, an 18th century picturesque
garden, was mistakenly described as showing Virginia Water in an 2014 auction, find out how our curator discovered the garden's true identity.
Painshill Park (c.1780) by UnknownGarden Museum
Charles Hamilton, an aristocrat, purchased the estate of Painshill in Surrey in 1738. He transformed the site into a picturesque garden: a landscape experienced as a succession of views through which a visitor travels.
The Ford (possibly 1636) by Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée)The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Picturesque gardens were the high of fashion in the 18th Century. Previously gardens had been more formal and architectural, such as Versailles, but were now informal landscapes that mimicked paintings.
Charles Hamilton was inspired by Renaissance landscape painting and other artworks he would have seen on his grand tour. The Painshill Park Trust likens the area around the serpentine lake to 'a harmonious scene painted by Claude Lorrain'.
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The view in the painting is from the Turkish Tent, shown here as it is today. From here you see the lake he made from a stream, the bridge crossing it and two of the structures he built as ornaments; the entrance to the crystal grotto and the mock-Gothic temple on top of the hill.
Inspired by his grand tour of europe, Hamilton had erected six garden buildings at Painshill: a gothic temple, a mausoleum, a Temple of Bacchus, a hermitage, a castle and a Turkish tent. Hamilton spent so much money on the garden that he was forced to sell Painshill to Bond Hopkins in 1773.
Painshill Park (c.1780) by UnknownGarden Museum
It is rare to find a such treasure as this painting of Painshill Park in an age where everyone is collecting and every auction is displayed online. The Museums's research into the picture had to be clandestine so that on the day of the auction the Museum was the only bidder who knew its true identity.
The Museums director found himself wondering if anyone else had spotted it, two plush men sat beside him on the train to the auction house talking about 18th century art. Although they alighted at the same stop, they weren't at the auction house. The museum brought the painting for a fraction of its value.
Research included an undercover visit to the auction house with a conservator, who carried a torch up their sleeve. On close inspection, the Gothic temple confirmed that it was indeed Painshill Park.
When the painting was conserved new detail emerged such as the two swans, the family in the carriage and the crystal grotto, the rocky surface between trees at the end of the left side of the lake.
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The rocky surface in the painting shows the entrance to crystal grotto. Inside the man made cave are stalactites covered with shimmering crystals, shown here as they are today.
Painshill Park (c.1780) by UnknownGarden Museum
The Museum has been able to date this picture to the 1780s or 1790s by the presence of the house on the left hand side, built by Bond Hopkins. The artist continues to be a mystery.
Discovering the true identify of the painting allowed the Museum to acquire not only a great record of the Painshill Park but an image which sums up the fashions and innovations in 18th century landscape gardens. The picturesque landscape in this painting shows many of the features typical of the movement including follies, expanses of water, and dense naturalistic groupings of trees.
This was the first 18th century oil painting of a landscape garden to enter the collection and was acquired in order to illustrate the changing style of design design.
Purchased with the assistance of the ACE/V&A Purchase Grant Fund, the Art Fund and the Beecroft Bequest.
