A translation of William Gilpin's On the Picturesque Beauty

Abstract

This text consists of a translation into Portuguese of the essay On Picturesque Beauty, first published in 1792. Its author, Anglican cleric William Gilpin (1724-1804), discusses therein those qualities that, when present in objects, render them picturesque, that is, particularly apt to be represented in painting. Gilpin argues that roughness is the chief picturesque quality. Distinguishing between the real beauty of smooth objects and the picturesque beauty of objects such as ruins, rough animal's coats and wrinkled faces, Gilpin also links this kind of beauty to vigorous movement and rough brush stokes, bespeaking thereby of the affinities between his aesthetic values and Baroque art, and contributing, moreover, to the theoretical and critical underpinning of Romantic art.