Review by Judith B. Tankard;

This is possibly one of the most beautiful books ever published on garden history. The publisher, David R. Godine of Boston, is a renowned "small press" noted for its fine graphics and traditional book designs. This book serves as a catalogue for a recent exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York that earned unprecedented rave reviews in the press. The exhibition and book bring to the fore the nature of Romanticism and the Romantic Movement, which, as the opposite of Classicism, gave primacy to the imagination, the senses, intuition, and inspiration. It also delved deeply into the mysterious and the dramatic. "Romantic gardens were a source of sensory delight, moral instruction, spiritual insight, and artistic inspiration," to quote the authors of the book.

The subject has been brought alive through a range of drawings, watercolors, and engravings that illuminate the scholarly, yet accessible text by several experts. Those experts are Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, founding president of the Central Park Conservancy; Elizabeth Eustis, an independent scholar and exhibition curator specializing in landscape history; and John Bidwell, Astor curator of Printed Books and Bindings, the Morgan Library. As Rogers writes in the introduction, "Romanticism transformed human consciousness and social behavior so deeply and thoroughly that we speak of the Romantic Movement as a revolution in Western culture." Definitions of the movement and its ideals are notoriously difficult to define, but in landscape design we think of scenic vistas, winding paths, bucolic meadows, and rustic retreats for solitary contemplation. England, in particular an Englishman's love of green pastoral countryside and gentle landscapes, provides one of the primary strains of the movement. Equal exposure is given to Romanticism in France, Germany, and America.

The illustrated exhibition catalogue draws upon the extensive resources of the Morgan Library as well as private collections, including those of the authors. Among the treasures depicted are manuscripts, letters, sketches, and landscape plans, including Frederick Law Olmsted's and Calvert Vaux's historic Greensward Plan for Central Park in 1858. Items representing Germany include rare watercolors for Prince Pückler von Muskau's well-known book on landscape gardening. The detailed catalog entries, filled with much insight, are meant to be pored over with the artwork. They offer a wealth of information to digest in one reading, so you will want to revisit this section of the book again and again.

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Elizabeth S. Eustis, and John Bidwell, Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design. New York: The Morgan Library and Museum in association with David R. Godine, Publisher, and the Foundation for Landscape Studies, 2010. $50.00