Visual Representations of the Annesley Gardens

By the end of the nineteenth century, the visual accuracy of photography marked a change in the praxis of recording and classifying horticultural information. The chemical nature of this creative process detached photography from historical discourses surrounding the artist/ maker, and has continued to align the medium with scientific interpretation in contemporary understandings of early twentieth-century garden representation. As an alternative, this paper considers physical form and expression in the garden visual, using the example of Castlewellan Forest Park. Parallels are drawn between photographs by Earl Hugh Annesley, one of the most prolific photographers in Edwardian Ireland, and a selection of wood engravings by his daughter Lady Mabel Annesley, from 1903 – c.1939. At a time when technological advancement in photographic printing saw the replacement of the traditional wood engraving craft, the images created by father and daughter emphasise instead, a complimentary paradox of garden representation in the interplay between photographic form and expressionist art, and reveals new modes of understanding garden design.