William Gilpin was an English artist, Church of England cleric, schoolmaster and author. He is best known as a travel writer and as one of those who originated the idea of the picturesque.
Penrith Castle in 1772 from Gilpin's book on Cumberland and Westmoreland.
William Gilpin by Henry Walton
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's leisured travellers to examine "the face of a country by the rules of picturesque beauty". Picturesque, along with the aesthetic and cultural strands of Gothic and Celticism, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 18th century.
A view of the Roman Campagna from Tivoli, evening by Claude Lorrain, 1644–1645
The Chancel and Crossing of Tintern Abbey, Looking towards the East Window by J. M. W. Turner, 1794
An Artist Studying from Nature by Claude Lorrain 1639
Villa Doria park in Albano Laziale