<scp>T</scp>he Line of Beauty in River Designs: Hogarth’s Aesthetic Theory on Capability Brown’s Eighteenth-Century River Design and Twentieth-Century River Restoration Design

Abstract

William Hogarth (1697–1764) was an influential eighteenth-century philosopher whose theory of beauty (1753) held that the “serpentine” line was the ideal “line of beauty.” Contemporary with Hogarth, the landscape architect Capability Brown (1716–1783) designed landscapes in England and Wales, creating sinuous water features by damming and reshaping small streams, perhaps the earliest examples of stream restoration. Prior authors suggested that Brown’s designs reflected the influence of Hogarth. Twentieth-century stream restoration projects in North America have been characterised by highly sinuous and symmetrical curves. Comparing the sinuosity and symmetry of Brown’s eighteenth-century water features, twentieth-century stream restoration projects, and Hogarth’s line of beauty, we found Brown’s features matched Hogarth’s line in sinuosity but were asymmetrical, while the recent stream restoration project designs had higher sinuosities and were nearly perfectly symmetrical.