Born at The Leasowes, Halesowen, near Birmingham; contemporary of Samuel Johnson at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he studied poetry with lifelong friends Richard Graves the younger and Richard Jago;
He published anonymously The Judgment of Hercules, 1741, and The Schoolmistress, 1742; Pastoral Ballads issued 1755, and other poems published, 1758, by Dodsley, who published the collected writings The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone Esq.,1764-69;
Shenstone had inherited The Leasowes,
1724, and devoted much care to laying out the grounds.
The poet and landscape gardener is depicted in the manner of the line engraving print to the frontispiece of "The Works of William Shenstone", set on later ebonised socle base approximately 23cm high overall
'A large, heavy, fat man, shy and reserved with strangers', the poet William Shenstone's first poems were published whilst he studied at Oxford, although he left without completing his degree.
Of private means, in 1745 he inherited the farming estate of Leasowes. He retired there and continued to write poetry in a pastoral vein. Shenstone coined the term 'landscape gardener', and created one of the earliest and most influential landscape gardens, his ferme ornée.
Diverting streams to create waterfalls he stage-managed the landscape to create views that unfolded from carefully chosen vantage points- a country estate laid out to be admired and walked through whilst retaining the sensibilities of a working farm.
The venture impoverished him but led to acclaim among contemporaries.
In his 1770
Observations on Modern Gardening Thomas Whately wrote of Shenstone and his
work: "The ideas of pastoral poetry seem now to be the standard of that simplicity;
and a place conformable to them is deemed a farm in its utmost purity. An
allusion to them evidently enters into the design of the Leasowes, where they
appear so lovely as to endear the memory of their author; and justify the
reputation of Mr. Shenstone ... every part is rural and natural".
https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7825/1/Hemingway17PhD.pdf
Given by Shenstone to his servant Mary Cutler in 1754 'in
acknowledgement of her native genius, her magnanimity, her Tenderness, &
her Fidelity'. The frame is probably original, a delicate variation on a Kent
frame with projecting square corners and ornament worked in the gesso. More
detailed information on this portrait is available in a National Portrait
Gallery collection catalogue, John Kerslake's Early Georgian Portraits (1977),
The Portrait of Shenstone by Edward Alcock.
1760.
(1508 mm x 997 mm)
National Portrait Gallery.
Shenstone was sitting to Alcock by 7 December 1759and the portrait is several times mentioned in letters as, for example, in the detailed description to Graves, 8 January 1760. By 9 February it was 'in a manner finished' but not content to leave well alone, the artist, according to Shenstone's letter to Graves, 2 May 1761, 'By way of improving the picture I meant for Dodsley ... has made it infinitely less like, and yet it must go to London as it is, for God knows when he can be brought to alter it.'
A
version painted by the artist for Graves himself, referred to in the same
letter, may be the portrait now in the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham.
Provenance
Bought, 1868, from Henry Graves & Co; with H. Rodd of
Great Newport Street, 1824; bought by a Mr Street and subsequently by a Mr
Cribb by whom sold to James Watt, FRS, of Aston Hall, Birmingham; Aston Hall
sale, 17 April 1849, lot 44, bought Norton, and later owned by Charles Birch;
intervening history not known.
Alexander Pope’s garden became a popular resort for visiting poets and writers. According to Joan Edwards, Pope told Shenstone to contact Robert Dodsley, Pope’s publisher, to publish his poem ‘The Judgement of Hercules’ in 1741.250
If Pope advised him about his poetry, he may have also invited him to view his garden at Twickenham while Shenstone was on his several sojourns to London. Considering Pope was one of Shenstone’s favourite poets - he had his works in his library and a bust of Pope in his house at The Leasowes.
