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Humphry Repton's tradecard
Engraving: from 'The Langley Park, Beckenham Red Book' (1790)
Source: RIBA British Architectural Library

Humphry Repton (1752-1818) was the last of the three outstanding designers who dominated the English Landscape movement from about 1720 to 1820. The successor of William Kent and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, he developed gardening by incorporating a greater sense of surprise, through more dramatic design and planting. Advocating the use of flower gardens, terraces and walls to mediate between the house and the landscape Repton disagreed with Brown’s preference for placing a house naked on a shaved lawn.

Repton was the only one of the three who published his ideas, making them much more accessible to a wider public. This tradecard dates from 1788, the year Repton set himself up as a landscape designer. Engraved by Thomas Medland, Repton is seen with a theodolite, a surveying instrument, directing labourers who are moving earth. Behind him lounges his assistant with a measuring rod. The landscape with lake, hill and distant tower surrounded by trees is typical of the wilder landscape Repton favoured.

Repton is best known for his ‘Red Books’ of lavishly produced volumes bound in red morocco leather that contained essays on, combined with handsome watercolour illustrations of, the sites under consideration. These books were expensive but persuasive marketing tools making use of flaps to indicate ‘before’ and ‘after’ views of his proposals. This tradecard from Repton’s Red Book for Langley Park, Beckenham (1790), provides a taste of the delights inside.