Repton believed that he was “gifted with the peculiar faculty of seeing almost immediately the way in which [a place] might be improved.” His watercolors communicated his vision and proved to be an attractive sales technique. These proposals functioned as effective advertisements and albums of artwork for clients who did not intend to purchase his services. Repton’s competitors dismissed his watercolors as a gaudy, “tinsel kind of talent,” but he intended them to be the beginning of an amicable conversation between himself and the client. As such, he often included himself in the foreground of his watercolors, sketching or even playing an instrument.

Shown here are reproductions of Repton’s proposals, including a depiction of the grounds at Endsleigh along with the original reveal, a view of the proposed landscape at Antony House, and Repton’s garden plan meant to be “a work of art, using the materials of nature.”

1. Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening by Humphry Repton. London: T. Bensley and Son, 1816.
2. The Red Books of Humphry Repton: Antony House. London: Basilisk Press, 1976.
3. Reproduction from Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening by Humphry Repton. London: Basilisk Press, 1976.