William Andrews Nesfield

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William Andrews Nesfield (born June 16, 1793 in Chester-le-Street , † March 2, 1881 in London ) was an English watercolor painter and landscape architect . His garden designs, popular at the time, adopted a formal, historicizing style that was characterized by richness of detail and multicolor.

Childhood, adolescence and military career

Nesfield was the eldest son of William Nesfield , a clergyman, and his first wife Elizabeth Andrews (died 1808). His father had planned a church profession for his son too. Young Nesfield's first three years of school, the last at Winchester College , were very unhappy. This was followed by two years at Bury St. Edmunds High School . It was at this time that Nesfield became interested in a military career. He attended Trinity College , Cambridge , and in 1809 he entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich as a cadet . In 1813 he took part in the Peninsular War . He then served two years in the British-American War in Canada as aide-de-camp for Sir Gordon Drummond and was a. a. Involved in the attack on Fort Erie in 1814 . In 1818, Nesfield retired from the military and began painting landscapes .

The watercolor painter

Bamburgh Castle

Nesfield received his first drawing lessons at the military academy from the son of the watercolor painter Paul Sandby . Nesfield improved his skills by taking lessons from the painter Copley Fielding . In 1823 he became a member of the Society of Painters in Watercolors , later the Royal Watercolor Society , and since then has regularly presented exhibitions with his works. He maintained numerous contacts with contemporary painters. In 1820 Nesfield traveled to Switzerland, after which he settled, with interruptions, from 1842 permanently, in London.

His pictures showed landscapes, sometimes in dramatic productions ( Bamburgh Castle , Northumberland ). In particular, he depicted motifs from Wales , Scotland and northern England, but also from Switzerland. He was particularly able to depict waterfalls.

The landscape architect

Witley Court with Nesfield's landscaping

After his marriage in 1833, Nesfield began a career as a landscape architect, often in collaboration with Anthony Salvin , William Burn (1789-1870) and Edward Blore . Nesfield was sure of the desire of many garden owners and lords, who were tired of the landscape garden style and wanted to return to formal garden design, to implement the Victorian taste. He was based on baroque models such as Antoine-Joseph Dézallier d'Argenville or Jacques Boyceau de la Barauderie . Nesfield's skill was not just to stage copies of traditional forms, but to develop an independent style: He saw landscaping as an “art of painting with the materials of nature” - with different tools and on a larger scale. But also detailed designs such as garden parterres and mazes or individual objects such as terraces and balustrades were among his works.

By the time he died, Nesfield had designed over two hundred gardens; he was a sought-after landscape artist. Since his richly decorated and often polychrome creations required a lot of care, most of his designs have not survived.

Private life and offspring

Nesfield married Emma Mills in 1833 (died 1874). The couple had two sons: William Eden Nesfield (1835–1888), who became an architect, and Markham Nesfield (1841–1874), who became a landscape architect; the latter had a fatal accident in a riding accident.

Horticultural work (selection)

literature

  • Christopher Ridgway : William Andrews Nesfield between Uvedal Price and Isambard Kingdom Brunel . In: Journal of garden history , Volume 13, 1993, pp. 69-89.
  • J. Michael Tooley : William Andrews Nesfield 1794-1881. Durham University Library . Exhibition catalog. Michaelmas Books , Witton-le-Wear 1994.
  • William Andrews Nesfield, Victorian landscape architect. Papers from the bicentenary conference (The King's Manor 1994) , edited by Christopher Ridgway . The King's Manor , York 1996.
  • Thomas Secombe, Huon Mallalieu : Nesfield, William Andrews (1794-1881) . In: Oxford dictionary of national biography. From the earliest times to the year 2000 , edited by HCG Matthew, Brian Harrison . Volume 40. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861390-3 , pp. 438-439.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Nesfield, William Andrews
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nesfield, WA
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British watercolor painter and landscape architect
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Chester-le-Street , Durham, England
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1881
Place of death London