William Gilpin (4 June 1724 – 5 April 1804) was an English artist, Church of England cleric, schoolmaster and author. He is most notable as a travel writer and as one of those who originated the idea of the picturesque.
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Life
Gilpin was born in Cumberland, the son of Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a soldier and amateur artist. From an early age he was an enthusiastic painter, sketcher and collector of prints. However, while his brother Sawrey Gilpin became a full-time professional painter, William opted for a career in the church, graduating from Queen's College, Oxford in 1748.
While still at Oxford, Gilpin anonymously published A Dialogue upon the Gardens... at Stow in Buckinghamshire (1748). Part guidebook to Stowe, part essay on aesthetics, it shows that Gilpin had already begun to develop his ideas on the picturesque. Unusually for the time, Gilpin showed an appreciation of wild and rugged mountain scenery, perhaps rooted in his Cumbrian upbringing. Even more unusually, he expressed ideas about the perception of beauty which were purely aesthetic and often divorced from other qualities of the object viewed, such as morality or utility. He is credited with helping to originate the idea of the “picturesque”, producing many pictures in this style. The British Museum holds 113 object of his including many of his drawings.