William Andrews Nesfield and the origins of the landscape architect

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article challenges the assumption that Frederick Law Olmsted was the first to call himself a landscape architect in the 1860s. Systematic study of archival records establishes that William Andrews Nesfield (1794–1881), an overlooked but pivotal practitioner in Victorian England, used the title as early as 1849. Dismissed by many historians as a revivalist of parterres and Italianate terraces, Nesfield encouraged the burgeoning field of landscape architecture by elevating the vocational landscape designer to professional landscape architect, expanding his audience from aristocratic clientele to the general public, and shifting his focus from rural estates to urban and suburban sites. That Olmsted stands in a landscape by Nesfield, as identified by Antonetti, when musing on his future profession, further demonstrates that Nesfield is an essential addition to the landscape studies canon. That Nesfield had broad disciplinary training and practiced a more rigorously comprehensive style of design than traditional garden design sheds new light on the origins of landscape architecture and its more expansive role in landscape studies.