(The two-century old Willowbank Estate in the Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario community of Queenston is a designated National Historic Site, and remains in the good hands of a group of volunteers known to many as ‘Friends of Willowbank’. This dedicated group holds a number of events through the year to raise funds in support of the full restoration of this grand estate, and the information Niagara At Large is posting below is one you would most certainly enjoy. By the way, it is hard to think of Willowbank without also remembering Laura Dodson, a longtime resident of Niagara-on-the-Lake who made preserving this heritage site one of her many missions in life – Doug Draper at www.niagaraatlarge.com.)
THE ART OF LANDSCAPE:
THE PICTURESQUE, THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME
A group of celebrated speakers and performers will explore the art of landscape this spring, as Willowbank marks the return of its annual spring lecture series. The series runs every second Saturday morning, from March 20 through June 12, followed by a reading in early July ofTomStoppard’s Arcadia.
A work by Humphry Repton, a major landscape artist from the 18th and 19th century in England.
“This is an exciting event for us” said Willowbank Executive Director Julian Smith. “When Willowbank was designated a National Historic Site, it was in part because of the quality of its Picturesque landscape.
This series will allow us to explore the richness of the Picturesque concept, and of landscape more generally. Because landscapes are such complex expressions of cultural, social and artistic intent, we have invited artists, writers, musicians, actors and actresses, as well as landscape architects and historians, to interpret and discuss the art of landscape.”
The lectures take place at 10am on Saturday mornings, in the beautiful Bright parlour at Willowbank. There will be a formal talk, followed by coffee and refreshments, and then a more informal follow-up discussion.
March 20: Julian Smith, architect and scholar, will introduce the topic and the series. He has recently returned from Paris, where he worked with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre to draft a new International Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscapes. His cultural landscape approach to heritage conservation has gained international attention through his projects and writings. He will also be joined by chamber musicians performing early 19th Century music inspired by landscape, and by John Osbaldeston, well known to BBC and CBC listeners, reading poetry of the period.
April 3: Wendy Shearer, landscape architect, will speak about her experiences restoring some of the great landscapes of southern Ontario, from the 19th and 20th Century. She is known as one of Canada’s foremost landscape restoration specialists, and is familiar with Willowbank and its early 19th Century context as a faculty associate.
April 17: Jennifer Dickson, Order of Canada and member of the Royal Academy of Arts in England, is broadly recognized as the pre-eminent artist interpreting the Picturesque tradition in landscape. Her work is in the National Gallery and other collections world-wide, and her gallery shows and presentations are always much anticipated. Her presentation will be intensely visual, with commentary.
May 1: Linda Dicaire, has been involved with historic landscapes in Canada and abroad. She was Chief Landscape Architect for the National Historic Sites program of Parks Canada, and has been active with the ICOMOS International Committee on Gardens and Landscapes. She is currently head of Design Approvals for the National Capital Commission. She will speak about the historic landscape traditions across Canada.
May 15: Noah Richler, is a writer and journalist, who has explored many facets of our connection with landscape. Among his projects for the BBC was a series on landscape and identity in different countries. His book This is My Country, What’s Yours? A Literary Landscape of Canada reflects his own literary tradition, including that of his father Mordecai Richler, and our present Canadian reality.
May 29: Mark Laird, landscape architect and historian, divides his time between teaching at Harvard, working out of his Toronto home, and restoring some of the great National Trust properties in the U.K. – including Hestercombe and Painshill Park. He is one of the world’s authorities on the Picturesque, and his book The Flowering of the Landscape Garden, has been so influential that a major conference will be held this year in the U.K. to discuss the Laird phenomenon. He will speak about the great 18th Century landscape tradition and its legacy.
June 12: Joan Coutu, is an art historian whose two special areas of interest have been the 18th Century landscape garden in England and the 20th Century landscape tradition in Canada. She has focused specifically on the Niagara Parkway and other large-scale public landscapes built during the period of Mackenzie King as Prime Minister and Thomas McQuesten as Ontario’s Minister of Public Works. She will speak about the reinterpretation of the Picturesque in the Niagara Parks Commission activities of the 1930s, and their relationship to ideas of Canadian and Ontario identity.
Early July: Jackie Maxwell is known in Canada and abroad as Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival, and acclaimed director. She has agreed to direct a play reading of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, a provocative and complex play which uses the Picturesque landscape tradition as a sub-text and foil for Stoppard’s exploration of order and chaos. The actors and actresses will be drawn from the Shaw Festival and acting community, and they will bring the play to life in a Willowbank setting. There are fascinating parallels – the historical play is set in the early 19th Century, close to the time Willowbank’s original landscape was created, and a key figure is Hannah Jarvis, the name of the woman who spent many years at Willowbank in the mid-19th Century helping her widowed daughter Hannah Jarvis Hamilton raise her 10 children.
Admission to each session is $25, with an admission price of $20 for Friends of Willowbank. Seating is limited, so advance registration is advised.
For reservations, contact Carol Perrin at 905-262-1239, x 21, or email willowbank@willowbank.ca.
Willowbank is located on the Niagara Parkway overlooking the historic Village of Queenston, Willowbank is conveniently located 5 minutes from Highway 405, or 10 minutes along the Niagara Parkway from the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake.
This lecture series has been generously sponsored by E. Oliver-Malone and R. Malone.
willowbank.ca
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