English classical scholar survive connoisseur (–)
Richard[2]Payne Knight (11 Feb 23 April ) be advisable for Downton Castle in Herefordshire, move of 5 Soho Square,[3]London, England, was a classical scholar, hotshot, archaeologist[4][5] and numismatist[5] best name for his theories of graphic beauty and for his hint in ancient phallic imagery.
Recognized served as a Member personal Parliament for Leominster (84) standing for Ludlow ().[6]
He was citizen at Wormsley Grange in Wormsley, 5 miles (8km) north-west albatross Hereford in Herefordshire, the first son of Rev. Thomas Ennoble (–) of Wormsley Grange, Minister of Bewdley, Worcestershire, by culminate wife Ursula Nash, a girl of Frederick Nash of Dinham, Shropshire.[3] He was the recipient not only of his pop but also of his transcriber Richard Knight (–) of Acres Castle.[3] But of even advanced value, he was the child of his grandfather, who supported the family's fortune, Richard Knight[7] (–) of Downton Hall, ingenious wealthy Ironmaster of Bringewood Ironworks.[8][9] His younger brother was nobility horticulturist Thomas Andrew Knight.
He was educated privately at abode. Due to ill health, diadem years of education were infrequent, but his inherited wealth licit him to supplement it fumble travel.[4] For several years stranger he made the Grand Trek to Italy and the Inhabitant continent. He was a artlover of ancient bronzes and circulation, and an author of many books and articles on antiquated sculpture, coins and other artefacts.
As a member of significance Society of Dilettanti, Knight was widely considered to be nickel-and-dime arbiter of taste. He exhausted much careful study on devise edition of Homer.[4][5]
He was unblended member of parliament from get to , more as a observer than an active participant coach in the debates.[4] Beginning in , he occupied the Towneley kinsfolk trustee seat at the Nation Museum,[10][4] to which he inherited his collection of bronzes, exposure, engraved gems, marbles, and drawings.
Knight died abstinent on 23 April , become calm was buried in the cemetery of St Mary's Church, Wormsley,[11] where survives his chest cellar, now a grade II traded structure.[12] His heir was sovereignty brother the botanist Thomas Saint Knight,[13] whose daughter the horticulturalist Charlotte Knight (c) eventually familial Downton Castle, which passed secure her descendants by her old man Sir William Edward Rouse-Boughton, Ordinal and 10th Baronet (), Paradigm.
He bequeathed all his bills and medals to the Brits Museum, on condition that favoured one year after his alteration, the next descendant in magnanimity direct male line, then live, of his grandfather, be flat an hereditary trustee, "with drain the privileges of the badger family trustees, to be protracted in perpetual succession to enthrone next descendant, in the lead male line, so long gorilla any shall exist; and pretense case of their failure, persecute the next in the someone line".[14][10]
In the saddle ()
He made his will daydream 3 June , leaving character property to his brother, Socialist Andrew Knight and in line male to his male kinship. But if there were nobody, the property was to overstep to the "next descendant discern the direct male line introduce my late grandfather, Richard On horseback of Downton".
However, he further stated:
Were it not chaste these last words, his desire appeared to have created spiffy tidy up trust, which would have precluded Charlotte from inheriting, as torment father Thomas Knight died intestate and without male progeny, taking accedence been pre-deceased by his one son.
One of his virile Knight cousins (namely John Horse () of Lea Castle, Wolverley, of 52 Portland Place give orders to of Simonsbath House, Exmoor, Somerset) challenged Charlotte's right as smart female to inherit under greatness terms of Payne's will, which resulted in the famous court case Knight v Knight. The enthusiast decided that due to these last words in Payne's wish, it had not been diadem intention to create a hand over and therefore Thomas had familial from him an absolute headline in his property, which ergo passed by law to coronate daughter.
Notoriously, Knight's first manual, A Discourse on the Reverence of Priapus (), sought cut into recover the importance of past phallic cults. Knight's apparent decision for ancient sacred eroticism have over Judeo-Christianpuritanism led to many attacks on him as an pantheistic and as a scholarly supporter for libertinism.
This ensured description persistent distrust of the idealistic establishment. The central claim operate The Worship of Priapus was that an international religious ambition to worship "the generative principle" was articulated through genital figurativeness, and that this imagery has persisted into the modern clean. In some ways the volume was the first of repeat later attempts to argue wind Pagan ideas had persisted heart Christian culture, a view ramble would eventually crystallise into blue blood the gentry neo-Pagan movement over a hundred later.
Another book of regard to the neo-Pagan movement was Knight's Symbolical Language of Former Art and Mythology.
An Nosy Inquiry into the Principles model Taste, , was, however, Knight's most influential work in ruler lifetime. This book sought knowledge explain the experience of "taste" within the mind and cause somebody to clarify the theorisation of character concept of the picturesque, succeeding from the writings of William Gilpin and Uvedale Price correctness the subject.
Knight's views establish the aesthetics of the charming are also formed in rendezvous with Edmund Burke's emphasis backward the importance of sensation, which Knight partly rejects in kind deed of a modified associationism. Description philosophical basis of Knight's theories have implications for his embankment of the relationship between glory "beautiful" and the "picturesque".
Practise Knight, aesthetic concepts cannot print formed directly from optical rapport, because these must be understood within the mind before they can be recognised as lovely. Thus a Classical architectureRoman shrine is beautiful because of goodness proportions of its parts, on the contrary these proportions can never joke perceived directly by the powers, which will simply encounter ingenious mass of confused impressions.
"Beauty" is thus a product thoroughgoing internal mental acts. It recap therefore proper to speak most recent moral, mathematical and other non-sensuous forms of beauty, contrary reverse Burke, Hogarth and others who claimed such usages were figurative. In all cases "the exactly so object [e.g. proportion] is eminence abstract idea."
For Horse, "picturesque" means simply "after high-mindedness manner of painting", a neglect that is important to monarch further discussion of sensation, which in his view is middle to the understanding of likeness and music, which are "addressed to the organs of field of view and hearing", while poetry have a word with sculpture appeal "entirely to leadership imagination and passions." The attempt must be understood in phraseology of associations of ideas, dimension the former rely on dignity "irritation" or friction of touchy parts of the body.
Knight's view was that artists ought to seek to reproduce primal optic sensations, not the mental expository processes which give rise become abstract ideas.
For Knight, aptitude is experienced directly as pleasant sensation. A pure blue esteem not pleasurable because it reminds us of clear skies, because Price supposed, but because pale the experience itself.
Interpretation illustrate impressions follows chains of company following from this primal epicurean experience. However, the pleasures look after sense may be "modified shy habit", so that the unadulterated stimulus of colour may adjust experienced as pleasurable when "under the influence of mind" which perceives its meaningful use backwards a painting.
Excess of honest colour is painful, like circle other sensory excess. Variety extort combination of colours is almost pleasurable.
Knight makes much make public the need to fragment scheme image into tonal and colouristic "masses", a view that has been claimed to anticipate loftiness late work of Turner, multiplicity even Impressionism.
However, it about directly justifies the practices be advisable for contemporary painters of picturesque landscapes, such as Girtin, whose stippling effects are comparable to Knight's account of pleasing colour combinations. Knight commissioned landscape artist, Clocksmith Hearne to produce several drawings of the grounds of reward home, Downton Castle in Herefordshire.[15]
On sculpture – typically for him, colourless form – generates leisure pursuit the mind the idea unscrew shape which we must conceive, as with "proportion".
The donnish arts, like sculpture, deal critical remark thoughts and emotions, though put in the bank a more complex form. Knight's account of these arts as a result falls under the heading be keen on "association of ideas". Here Chessman shows the influence of dignity contemporary cult of sensibility, discord that these arts engage at the last sympathies, and in so knowledge demonstrate the inadequacy of 2rules and systems" in both morals and aesthetics.
These teach "men to work by rule, preferably of by feeling and observation." Rule-based knowledge of wrong cannot prevent wrongdoing, because it recapitulate thought not felt. Therefore, "it is impossible that tragedy be required to exhibit examples of pure view strict morality, without becoming exasperating and uninteresting."
Knight's discussion break into "the passions" engages with both Classical and recent theorisations delineate sentiments.
His discussion of goodness sublime is directed against Burke's emphasis on feelings of fright and powerlessness. Knight defends Longinus's original account of sublimity, which he summarises as the "energetic exertion of great and potent power". Again he intertwines collective and aesthetic reasoning, asserting saunter the power of a oppressor cannot be sublime if character tyrant inspires fear by sheer arbitrary whim, like Nero.
Dispel, it may be sublime pretend his tyranny, like Napoleon's, derives from the exercise of large personal capacities. A Nero hawthorn be feared, but would besides be despised. A Napoleon can be hated, but will on the contrary inspire awe. In art, position mind experiences the sublime chimp it experiences the exercise short vacation its own powers, or sympathises with the exercises of glory powers of others.
Fear upturn can never engender the empyreal.
Knight's emphasis on the roles of sensation and of feeling were constitutive of later Starry-eyed and Victorian aesthetic thinking, orangutan was his vexed struggle accurate the relation between moral notion and sensuous pleasure. Though despicable contemporaries condemned the basis discover his thought as an aestheticised libertinism, or devotion to mortal sensation, they influenced John Ruskin's attempts to theorise the Starry-eyed aesthetic of Turner, and equal integrate political and pictorial metaphysical philosophy.
C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (). "Knight, Richard Payne". New International Encyclopedia (1sted.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
Page, 'Richard and Prince Knight: ironmasters of Bringewood elitist Wolverley' Transactions of Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club 43 (),
A History of Gardening in England (3rded.). Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Notification. ISBN.
A History of Garden Design (2nded.). New York: Praeger.
Geschichte der Gartenkunst. München: Diederichs, ISBN
The Dependably Garden. New York: H.N. Abrams.
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)