Richard payne knight biography of abraham

English classical scholar vital connoisseur (1751–1824)

Richard^[2]Payne Knight (11 Feb 1751 – 23 April 1824) of Downton Castle in Herefordshire, and of 5 Soho Square,^[3]London, England, was a classical pundit, connoisseur, archaeologist^[4][5] and numismatist^[5] outperform known for his theories pay for picturesque beauty and for cap interest in ancient phallic allusion.

He served as a Fellow of Parliament for Leominster (1780–84) and for Ludlow (1784–1806).^[6]

Origins

He was born at Wormsley Grange perform Wormsley, 5 miles (8 km) nor'-west of Hereford in Herefordshire, integrity eldest son of Rev. Clocksmith Knight (1697–1764) of Wormsley Farm, Rector of Bewdley, Worcestershire, induce his wife Ursula Nash, exceptional daughter of Frederick Nash warning sign Dinham, Shropshire.^[3] He was nobility heir not only of surmount father but also of ruler uncle Richard Knight (1693–1765) carryon Croft Castle.^[3] But of still more value, he was influence heir of his grandfather, who founded the family's fortune, Richard Knight^[7] (1659–1745) of Downton Foyer, a wealthy Ironmaster of Bringewood Ironworks.^[8][9] His younger brother was the horticulturist Thomas Andrew Rider.

Career

He was educated privately engagement home. Due to ill vomiting, his years of education were few, but his inherited money allowed him to supplement adjacent with travel.^[4] For several life-span from 1767 he made magnanimity Grand Tour to Italy endure the European continent.

He was a collector of ancient bronzes and coins, and an framer of numerous books and with regard to on ancient sculpture, coins standing other artefacts. As a affiliate of the Society of Dilettanti, Knight was widely considered resume be an arbiter of experiment with. He expended much careful burn the midnight oil on an edition of Homer.^[4][5]

He was a member of fantan from 1780 to 1806, go on as a spectator than mammoth active participant in the debates.^[4] Beginning in 1814, he show the Towneley family trustee post at the British Museum,^[10][4] make ill which he bequeathed his kind of bronzes, coins, engraved jewels, marbles, and drawings.

Death existing succession

Knight died unmarried on 23 April 1824, and was concealed in the churchyard of Candid Mary's Church, Wormsley,^[11] where survives his chest tomb, now top-notch grade II listed structure.^[12] Sovereign heir was his brother magnanimity botanist Thomas Andrew Knight,^[13] whose daughter the horticulturalist Charlotte Horse (c.1801-1843) eventually inherited Downton Hall, which passed to her affinity by her husband Sir William Edward Rouse-Boughton, 2nd and Tenth Baronet (1788-1856), MP.

He inbred all his coins and medals to the British Museum, lead astray condition that within one period after his decease, the close descendant in the direct man's line, then living, of queen grandfather, be made an transferrable trustee, "with all the privileges of the other family lodge, to be continued in ageless succession to his next baby, in the direct male ticket, so long as any shall exist; and in case end their failure, to the press on in the female line".^[14][10]

Will & Knight v.

Knight (1840)

He troublefree his will on 3 June 1814, leaving the property connection his brother, Thomas Andrew Ennoble and in tail male walk his male descendants. But in case there were none, the riches was to pass to grandeur "next descendant in the ancient male line of my conventional grandfather, Richard Knight of Downton".

However, he also stated:

"I bank holiday to the liberality of adhesive successors to reward any barrenness of my old servants mount tenants according to their scanty, and to their justice uphold continuing the estates in integrity male succession, according to distinction will of the founder watch the family, my above-named grandfather".

Were it not for these at the end words, his will appeared on hand have created a trust, which would have precluded Charlotte escape inheriting, as her father Clocksmith Knight died intestate and evade male progeny, having been pre-deceased by his only son.

Facial appearance of his male Knight cousins (namely John Knight (1765-1850) have a high regard for Lea Castle, Wolverley, of 52 Portland Place and of Simonsbath House, Exmoor, Somerset) challenged Charlotte's right as a female side inherit under the terms systematic Payne's will, which resulted set in motion the famous 1840 lawsuit Horseman v Knight.

The judge positive that due to these surname words in Payne's will, detach had not been his target to create a trust ahead therefore Thomas had inherited liberate yourself from him an absolute title mop the floor with his property, which thus passed by law to his maid.

Books

Notoriously, Knight's first book, A Discourse on the Worship closing stages Priapus (1786), sought to demo the importance of ancient male cults.

Knight's apparent preference be directed at ancient sacred eroticism over Judeo-Christianpuritanism led to many attacks t-junction him as an infidel concentrate on as a scholarly apologist unmixed libertinism. This ensured the oppressive distrust of the religious disposition. The central claim of The Worship of Priapus was divagate an international religious impulse cause problems worship "the generative principle" was articulated through genital imagery, prosperous that this imagery has persisted into the modern age.

Quandary some ways the book was the first of many succeeding attempts to argue that Heathen ideas had persisted within Christianly culture, a view that would eventually crystallise into the neo-Pagan movement over a century subsequent.

Another book of interest meet the neo-Pagan movement was Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Stick down and Mythology.

An Analytical Interrogation into the Principles of Taste, 1805, was, however, Knight's heavy-handed influential work in his interval. This book sought to articulate the experience of "taste" prearranged the mind and to reply the theorisation of the paradigm of the picturesque, following break the writings of William Gilpin and Uvedale Price on justness subject.

Knight's views on leadership aesthetics of the picturesque put in order also formed in engagement decree Edmund Burke's emphasis on character importance of sensation, which Mounted partly rejects in favour look up to a modified associationism. The scholarly basis of Knight's theories conspiracy implications for his account reproach the relationship between the "beautiful" and the "picturesque".

For Cavalier, aesthetic concepts cannot be baculiform directly from optical sensations, thanks to these must be interpreted at bottom the mind before they throng together be recognised as beautiful. In this manner a Classical architectureRoman temple pump up beautiful because of the bigness of its parts, but these proportions can never be apparent directly by the senses, which will simply encounter a feed of confused impressions.

"Beauty" decline thus a product of inner mental acts. It is thus proper to speak of honest, mathematical and other non-sensuous forms of beauty, contrary to Obstruct, Hogarth and others who assumed such usages were metaphorical. Delicate all cases "the particular look forward to [e.g. proportion] is an unpractical idea."

Visual arts

For Knight, "picturesque" means simply "after the step of painting", a point stroll is important to his other discussion of sensation, which reveal his view is central variety the understanding of painting present-day music, which are "addressed connection the organs of sight illustrious hearing", while poetry and statue appeal "entirely to the purpose and passions." The latter corrosion be understood in terms show associations of ideas, while decency former rely on the "irritation" or friction of sensitive capabilities of the body.

Knight's inspect was that artists should have a go to reproduce primal visual empathy, not the mental interpretative processes which give rise to theoretical ideas.

For Knight, colour quite good experienced directly as pleasurable adventure. A pure blue is keen pleasurable because it reminds unfounded of clear skies, as Degree supposed, but because of greatness experience itself.

Interpretation of tyremarks follows chains of association followers from this primal sensory stop thinking about. However, the pleasures of out-of-the-way may be "modified by habit", so that the pure impulse of colour may be competent as pleasurable when "under high-mindedness influence of mind" which perceives its meaningful use within elegant painting.

Excess of pure tint is painful, like any bug sensory excess. Variety and company of colours is most convincing.

Knight makes much of greatness need to fragment an showing into tonal and colouristic "masses", a view that has antique claimed to anticipate the invigorate work of Turner, or flat Impressionism. However, it most straightforward justifies the practices of coexistent painters of picturesque landscapes, specified as Girtin, whose stippling goods are comparable to Knight's tab of pleasing colour combinations.

Ennoble commissioned landscape artist, Thomas Hearne to produce several drawings taste the grounds of his soupзon, Downton Castle in Herefordshire.^[15]

On model – typically for him, flat form – generates in loftiness mind the idea of on top form which we must conceptualise, hoot with "proportion".

The literary study, like sculpture, deal with dismiss and emotions, though in pure more complex form. Knight's deposit account of these arts therefore flood under the heading of "association of ideas". Here Knight shows the influence of the contemporaneous cult of sensibility, arguing depart these arts engage our climate, and in so doing instruct the inadequacy of 2rules boss systems" in both morality present-day aesthetics.

These teach "men authorization work by rule, instead director by feeling and observation." Rule-based knowledge of wrong cannot thwart wrongdoing, because it is thoughtfulness not felt. Therefore, "it assay impossible that tragedy should bare examples of pure and pitiless morality, without becoming dull charge uninteresting."

Knight's discussion of "the passions" engages with both Pattern and recent theorisations of responsiveness.

His discussion of the exalted is directed against Burke's stress on feelings of terror prosperous powerlessness. Knight defends Longinus's modern account of sublimity, which proscribed summarises as the "energetic work of great and commanding power". Again he intertwines social distinguished aesthetic reasoning, asserting that glory power of a tyrant cannot be sublime if the authoritarian inspires fear by mere capricious whim, like Nero.

However, moneyed may be sublime if fillet tyranny, like Napoleon's, derives raid the exercise of immense individual capacities. A Nero may suitably feared, but would also emerging despised. A Napoleon may carve hated, but will nevertheless stimulate awe. In art, the down tools experiences the sublime as slap experiences the exercise of sheltered own powers, or sympathises pick up again the exercises of the senses of others.

Fear itself crapper never engender the sublime.

Knight's emphasis on the roles appreciated sensation and of emotion were constitutive of later Romantic prep added to Victorian aesthetic thinking, as was his vexed struggle with ethics relation between moral feeling near sensuous pleasure. Though some formulation condemned the basis of tiara thought as an aestheticised libidinousness, or devotion to physical get the impression, they influenced John Ruskin's attempts to theorise the Romantic cultured of Turner, and to dispose political and pictorial values.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

• Amherst, Alicia (2006) [1910].

  A Anecdote of Gardening in England (3rd ed.). Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing. ISBN .

• Blomfield, Sir F. Reginald; Thomas, Inigo, Illustrator (1972) [1901]. The Majestic Garden in England, 3rd ed. New 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 Gathering (1928) [1910]. History of Manoeuvre Art. Vol. 2. London & Toronto, New York: J. M. Dent; 1928 Dutton.

  ISBN .: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) 945 pages Publisher: Hacker Center of attention Books; Facsimile edition (June 1972) ISBN 0-87817-008-1; ISBN 978-0-87817-008-1.

• Gothein, Marie. Geschichte plump for 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 gleam Landscapes, 1700–1750. Country Life.
• Hyams, Prince S.; Smith, Edwin, photos (1964). The English Garden. New York: H.N. Abrams.: CS1 maint: twofold names: authors list (link)

External links