Brown, Lancelot

Brown, Lancelot (1715/16–83). English landscape designer, generally known as ‘Capability’ because of his references to the ‘capabilities’ of the places about which he was consulted. Born in Northumberland, he worked first for Sir William Loraine at Kirkharle but by 1741 had moved south to Stowe. Brown took a prominent part in the evolution of the Stowe landscape for which Gibbs and Kent were providing buildings. Soon Brown established his own distinctive landscape style with its clumps, belts, bridges, irregular lakes, and encircling woodland and lawns. Major commissions (sometimes involving the design of buildings) began to come his way, among them Croome Court (from 1750), Longleat, Burton Constable, Chatsworth (from 1761), and Blenheim (from about 1764). In 1764 Brown was appointed master gardener at Hampton Court, a post which carried with it an official residence within the palace grounds, Wilderness House. In 1771 he went into partnership with the younger Henry Holland (1745–1806), later his son-in-law, and together they undertook architectural commissions such as Claremont (1771–4), Cadland (1775–8), and Nuneham (1781–2). On his death in 1783 Brown was buried at Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire, where he had bought the manor in 1767. Horace Walpole wrote of him: ‘such was the effect of his genius, that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered. So closely did he copy nature that his work will be mistaken for it.’

Peter Willis