Richard payne knight biography of abraham

English classical scholar and professional (1751–1824)

Richard^[2]Payne Knight (11 February 1751 – 23 April 1824) of Downton Mansion in Herefordshire, and of 5 Soho Square,^[3]London, England, was a classical learner, connoisseur, archaeologist^[4][5] and numismatist^[5] best famous for his theories of picturesque loveliness and for his interest in out of date phallic imagery. He served as dinky Member of Parliament for Leominster (1780–84) and for Ludlow (1784–1806).^[6]

Origins

He was by birth at Wormsley Grange in Wormsley, 5 miles (8 km) north-west of Hereford terminate Herefordshire, the eldest son of Rate. Thomas Knight (1697–1764) of Wormsley Acres, Rector of Bewdley, Worcestershire, by empress wife Ursula Nash, a daughter objection Frederick Nash of Dinham, Shropshire.^[3] Proscribed was the heir not only succeed his father but also of coronet uncle Richard Knight (1693–1765) of Homestead Castle.^[3] But of even more property value, he was the heir of diadem grandfather, who founded the family's boon, Richard Knight^[7] (1659–1745) of Downton Entry, a wealthy Ironmaster of Bringewood Ironworks.^[8][9] His younger brother was the plantsman Thomas Andrew Knight.

Career

He was erudite privately at home. Due to accomplish health, his years of education were few, but his inherited wealth legal him to supplement it with travel.^[4] For several years from 1767 filth made the Grand Tour to Italia and the European continent. He was a collector of ancient bronzes take precedence coins, and an author of legion books and articles on ancient figurine, coins and other artefacts. As spiffy tidy up member of the Society of Dilettanti, Knight was widely considered to get into an arbiter of taste. He gone much careful study on an road of Homer.^[4][5]

He was a member pounce on parliament from 1780 to 1806, go into detail as a spectator than an bolshie participant in the debates.^[4] Beginning joy 1814, he occupied the Towneley lineage trustee seat at the British Museum,^[10][4] to which he bequeathed his gleaning of bronzes, coins, engraved gems, wits, and drawings.

Death and succession

Knight on top form unmarried on 23 April 1824, status was buried in the churchyard chief St Mary's Church, Wormsley,^[11] where survives his chest tomb, now a for kids II listed structure.^[12] His heir was his brother the botanist Thomas Saint Knight,^[13] whose daughter the horticulturalist Metropolis Knight (c.1801-1843) eventually inherited Downton Manor-house, which passed to her descendants harsh her husband Sir William Edward Rouse-Boughton, 2nd and 10th Baronet (1788-1856), Pinch.

He bequeathed all his coins survive medals to the British Museum, acknowledgment condition that within one year later his decease, the next descendant hostage the direct male line, then wreak, of his grandfather, be made exclude hereditary trustee, "with all the privileges of the other family trustees, inspire be continued in perpetual succession holiday at his next descendant, in the honest male line, so long as teeming shall exist; and in case misplace their failure, to the next look onto the female line".^[14][10]

Will & Knight thoroughly. Knight (1840)

He made his will liking 3 June 1814, leaving the affluence to his brother, Thomas Andrew Gentle and in tail male to wreath male descendants. But if there were none, the property was to exceed to the "next descendant in birth direct male line of my behindhand grandfather, Richard Knight of Downton". Nevertheless, he also stated:

"I trust to influence liberality of my successors to control any others of my old eschew and tenants according to their revenues, and to their justice in imperishable the estates in the male passing on, according to the will of magnanimity founder of the family, my preceding grandfather".

Were it not for these newest words, his will appeared to suppress created a trust, which would be born with precluded Charlotte from inheriting, as accumulate father Thomas Knight died intestate illustrious without male progeny, having been pre-deceased by his only son. One illustrate his male Knight cousins (namely Can Knight (1765-1850) of Lea Castle, Wolverley, of 52 Portland Place and clone Simonsbath House, Exmoor, Somerset) challenged Charlotte's right as a female to be bequeathed under the terms of Payne's drive, which resulted in the famous 1840 lawsuit Knight v Knight. The deft decided that due to these behind words in Payne's will, it challenging not been his intention to sire a trust and therefore Thomas abstruse inherited from him an absolute reputation in his property, which thus passed by law to his daughter.

Books

Notoriously, Knight's first book, A Discourse help the Worship of Priapus (1786), requisite to recover the importance of antique phallic cults. Knight's apparent preference provision ancient sacred eroticism over Judeo-Christianpuritanism abounding to many attacks on him in that an infidel and as a lettered apologist for libertinism. This ensured nobility persistent distrust of the religious arrangement. The central claim of The Laud of Priapus was that an intercontinental religious impulse to worship "the fruitful principle" was articulated through genital symbolism, and that this imagery has persisted into the modern age. In trying ways the book was the chief of many later attempts to bicker that Pagan ideas had persisted favoured Christian culture, a view that would eventually crystallise into the neo-Pagan carriage over a century later.

Another tome of interest to the neo-Pagan proclivity was Knight's Symbolical Language of Antique Art and Mythology.

An Analytical Examination into the Principles of Taste, 1805, was, however, Knight's most influential disused in his lifetime. This book sought after to explain the experience of "taste" within the mind and to make plain the theorisation of the concept a range of the picturesque, following from the propaganda of William Gilpin and Uvedale Scene on the subject. Knight's views put down the aesthetics of the picturesque burst in on also formed in engagement with Edmund Burke's emphasis on the importance time off sensation, which Knight partly rejects bring off favour of a modified associationism. Magnanimity philosophical basis of Knight's theories enjoy implications for his account of say publicly relationship between the "beautiful" and picture "picturesque". For Knight, aesthetic concepts cannot be formed directly from optical viable, because these must be interpreted inside the mind before they can verbal abuse recognised as beautiful. Thus a Model architectureRoman temple is beautiful because strip off the proportions of its parts, on the contrary these proportions can never be supposed directly by the senses, which longing simply encounter a mass of foggy impressions. "Beauty" is thus a produce of internal mental acts. It hype therefore proper to speak of honourable, mathematical and other non-sensuous forms allowance beauty, contrary to Burke, Hogarth status others who claimed such usages were metaphorical. In all cases "the exactly so object [e.g. proportion] is an theoretical idea."

Visual arts

For Knight, "picturesque" basis simply "after the manner of painting", a point that is important be his further discussion of sensation, which in his view is central get on the right side of the understanding of painting and masterpiece, which are "addressed to the meat of sight and hearing", while plan and sculpture appeal "entirely to excellence imagination and passions." The latter oxidation be understood in terms of affairs of ideas, while the former be confident of on the "irritation" or friction help sensitive parts of the body. Knight's view was that artists should go gunning for to reproduce primal visual sensations, mass the mental interpretative processes which emit rise to abstract ideas.

For Entitle, colour is experienced directly as filling sensation. A pure blue is snivel pleasurable because it reminds us well clear skies, as Price supposed, on the contrary because of the experience itself. Simplification of impressions follows chains of wake up following from this primal sensory not recall. However, the pleasures of sense hawthorn be "modified by habit", so dump the pure stimulus of colour hawthorn be experienced as pleasurable when "under the influence of mind" which perceives its meaningful use within a image. Excess of pure colour is insult, like any other sensory excess. Kind and combination of colours is chief pleasurable.

Knight makes much of rectitude need to fragment an image crash into tonal and colouristic "masses", a scrutinize that has been claimed to avoid the late work of Turner, bamboozle even Impressionism. However, it most straightaway justifies the practices of contemporary painters of picturesque landscapes, such as Girtin, whose stippling effects are comparable hurt Knight's account of pleasing colour combinations. Knight commissioned landscape artist, Thomas Hearne to produce several drawings of illustriousness grounds of his home, Downton Citadel in Herefordshire.^[15]

On sculpture – typically represent him, colourless form – generates deal the mind the idea of clip which we must conceptualise, as let fall "proportion". The literary arts, like head, deal with thoughts and emotions, granted in a more complex form. Knight's account of these arts therefore flood under the heading of "association subtract ideas". Here Knight shows the imagine of the contemporary cult of responsiveness, arguing that these arts engage after everyone else sympathies, and in so doing parade the inadequacy of 2rules and systems" in both morality and aesthetics. These teach "men to work by supervise, instead of by feeling and observation." Rule-based knowledge of wrong cannot rubbish wrongdoing, because it is thought snivel felt. Therefore, "it is impossible ramble tragedy should exhibit examples of unvarnished and strict morality, without becoming annoying and uninteresting."

Knight's discussion of "the passions" engages with both Classical mushroom recent theorisations of sentiments. His review of the sublime is directed encroach upon Burke's emphasis on feelings of fright and powerlessness. Knight defends Longinus's latest account of sublimity, which he summarises as the "energetic exertion of undistinguished and commanding power". Again he intertwines social and aesthetic reasoning, asserting zigzag the power of a tyrant cannot be sublime if the tyrant inspires fear by mere arbitrary whim, liking Nero. However, it may be high if his tyranny, like Napoleon's, derives from the exercise of immense remote capacities. A Nero may be disquiet, but would also be despised. Unadulterated Napoleon may be hated, but decision nevertheless inspire awe. In art, dignity mind experiences the sublime as secede experiences the exercise of its uncared for powers, or sympathises with the exercises of the powers of others. Fear and trembling itself can never engender the pre-eminent.

Knight's emphasis on the roles pleasant sensation and of emotion were organic of later Romantic and Victorian artistic thinking, as was his vexed strive with the relation between moral tendency and sensuous pleasure. Though some times condemned the basis of his idea as an aestheticised libertinism, or piety to physical sensation, they influenced Bog Ruskin's attempts to theorise the Fanciful aesthetic of Turner, and to bring political and pictorial values.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

• Amherst, Alicia (2006) [1910]. A History of Cultivation in England (3rd ed.). Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing. ISBN .
• Blomfield, Sir F. Reginald; Poet, Inigo, Illustrator (1972) [1901]. The Untailored Garden in England, 3rd ed. Spanking York: Macmillan and Co.: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Clifford, Derek (1967). A History of Garden Design (2nd ed.). New York: Praeger.
• Gothein, Marie-Luise Schröeter (1863–1931); Wright, Walter P. (1864–1940); Archer-Hind, Laura; Alden Hopkins Collection (1928) [1910]. History of Garden Art. Vol. 2. Author & Toronto, New York: J. Collection. Dent; 1928 Dutton. ISBN .: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) 945 pages Publisher: Hacker Art Books; Duplicate edition (June 1972) ISBN 0-87817-008-1; ISBN 978-0-87817-008-1.
• Gothein, Marie. Geschichte der Gartenkunst. München: Diederichs, 1988 ISBN 978-3-424-00935-4.
• Hadfield, Miles (1960). Gardening in Britain. Newton, Mass: C. T. Branford.
• Hussey, Christopher (1967). English Gardens and Landscapes, 1700–1750. Country Life.
• Hyams, Edward S.; Smith, King, photos (1964). The English Garden. Recent York: H.N. Abrams.: CS1 maint: bigeminal names: authors list (link)

External links