KENT, WILLIAM, the father of modern landscape-gardening, was born in Yorkshire in 1685. His parents, persons in humble life, apprenticed him to a coach-painter; but he soon became conscious that he had talent for a much higher walk of art, and set off to London to seek his fortunes there as a portrait and historical painter. He had the good luck to fall in with kindly patrons, who supplied him with the means of completing his studies in Italy. After a six years' residence in that country he became acquainted in 1716 with the Earl of Burlington, with whom he returned to England, and under whose roof he continued to reside till his death in 1748. The studies of both lay in the same direction, and the patron, from his wealth and position, was able to procure many commissions for his protégé. Abandoning altogether pictorial art, in which he was never likely to attain any distinction, Kent henceforth found his true sphere in architecture and landscape-gardening. Of the latter of these arts, as now practised in England, he may justly be regarded as the father. The Temple of Venus at Stowe, and the splendid palace of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham in Norfolk, are attributed to him, and, if really his, do great credit to his architectural taste and talent. In the ages previous to his, artists had been held to succeed in proportion as they banished every touch of nature from their designs; and every garden with the least pretensions to fashion was filled with giants, animals, monsters, coats of
Kentucky arms, and mottoes in yew, box, and holly. Absurdity could go no further, and luckily at this moment Kent appeared painter enough, in the words of Walpole, "to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays." Nature was everywhere restored, and the old absurdities were discarded for ever. Gardens and lawns were from this time laid out according to the laws of perspective, and light and shade. A similar reformation was effected in the management of water; canals, circular basins, and cascades tumbling down marble steps, were supplanted by streams which seemed to wind away at pleasure, and were lost and restored to view again at proper intervals. Not seldom his imitations of nature were carried too far, as when, in Kensington Gardens, he planted dead trees to give a greater air of truth to the scene. But he was easily laughed out of this extreme, whose folly he was himself one of the first to detect. As a sculptor, Kent never attained any eminence. The well-known statue of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey is from his chisel, and does very little credit either to his taste or judgment.