Ches[t]nut in Greenwich Park n.d.

Thomas Creswick sketched this delicate pencil drawing, "Chestnut in Greenwich Park," sometime in the mid-19th century. Creswick was a member of the British landscape school, a movement that promoted the moral value of nature. But what are the politics of landscape imagery? The British landscape school helped construct a national identity rooted in an idealised countryside. What was excluded from this vision? Where were the urban poor, the pollution of industry, or the vast colonial project that extracted resources from across the globe? Greenwich Park itself was enclosed by the crown in the 15th century, restricting access to common land. As art historians, we can draw on social histories of land ownership, the enclosure movement, and the growth of British nationalism to understand how seemingly innocent landscape imagery might reinforce specific social and political interests.