研究期間：10108~10207;In eighteenth-century England country houses played an important role artistically, politically, and socio-economically; today, they are highly acclaimed as national heritage. By looking at how country houses were represented in printed words and images in the late eighteenth century, this research aims to understand how country houses were perceived and what roles they played in the social and cultural field, and to explore the process through which the status of country houses changed from being a ‘private home and gallery of aristocracy’ into a public symbol of English national art and culture. This is a two-year research project. The first year explores the publication of writings about country houses and focuses on the two Tours by the famous agricultural writer Arthur Young (1741-1820) published in 1768 and 1770. By setting his Tours in the context of the increasingly popular country-house visiting and picturesque tour, this research aims to explore the significance of Young’s intentional mixture of agricultural information with lengthy descriptions of art in one book, and to discuss the relationship between art collecting and national wealth and the position of country houses in the late-eighteenth-century English cultural landscape. The second year turns to look at pictorial representation of country houses, centering on three books of prints by Paul Sandby, William Watts, and William Angus published in the 1770s and 1780s. In Sandby’s The Virtuosi’s Museum prints of country houses were mixed with prints of castles, architectural ruins, and picturesque scenes, while Watts’s and Angus’s The Seats of the Nobility and Gentry were consisted only of prints of country houses as a new genre. This research aims to examine the way in which these prints represented country houses, and to explore the relationship and difference between these printed images and oil paintings and watercolours depicting country houses. Finally, it is hoped that this research will shed some light on the agency of print culture in constructing a public image of country houses by turning them from being private houses into epitomizing the art and culture of the English nation.
