1800-1810 : the Democracy of the Picturesque

The essay explores a decade in which the picturesque comes of age: in gardens, it is replaced by Repton's gardenesque; in the aesthetic debate, its earlier formalism is replaced by the theory of psychological associations; in England the inception of mass visual culture feeds the public with a proliferation of images, prints, cheap reproductions. The essay analyses Richard Payne Knight's inquiry on taste, in which the picturesque becomes associated with social distinction; at the end of the decade, picturesque places, characters, interiors, objects, are viewed through the lens of irony. The final avatars of the picturesque fashion victims are Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet.