Rousham Manor in the Cotswolds of England: Rosanna Hardin Hall's "Travel Adventures At The Easel"

Steve, a cheerful and reliable taxi driver in the Cotswolds in England, drives me to Rousham Manor where I have permission to do my plein air paintings. English gardens and early fall weather – cold, gray and damp - prove to be a large challenge. Courageously, I visit them with the greatest sense of adventure. Rousham is located in the remote countryside. We switch back and forth along narrow country roads and, even with Steve’s handy directional map, we get lost – several times.

We finally find Rousham Manor and, as we enter the farm, I see beautiful longhorn cattle which I have seen on Texas range land. so common long ago in the Old West of the United States. We certainly are out in the English countryside, though. At the Rousham Manor, we are greeted by Julian, a gardener, who is perched high on a ladder where he is clipping a two-story-high hedge. He comes down from the ladder to chat and soon he and Steve are running around the yard after cockerels, young roosters.

Rousham Manor Dovecote

“Any chance I could have two cockerels?” Steve asks. “The thing is, I have a buddy on whom I want to play a practical joke. I’ll sneak into his backyard tonight and leave them. Then in early morning, they will wake him with their cock-a-doodle-do.” And they laugh at his planned prank. Steve drives away, promising to return to pick me up at 6 p.m.

Left alone, I lug my painting equipment toward the manor which stands stately and silent. It is a light-colored, solid stone house with regularly placed windows looking out toward a bowling green – a long wide stretch of yellow English grass where a polo match could take place. At the far end is a large statue of a lion attacking a horse. Huge boxwood hedges run alongside the bowling green and seem as high as the house of four stories. They are so much higher than my Pruitt hedges in my Victorian yard in Woodruff Place.

After exploring the bowling greens, I duck through an opening in the wall of hedge and wander along a garden path toward several rooms of flowers, fruits, and topiary plants. In the rose garden, I stroll down the brick paths admiring the flowers. But more spectacularly is the round structure in the center of the rose garden. I don’t know how I know what to call it; but the term “dovecote” pops into my mind. All I know about doves is that they lay eggs, carry messages, make good eating – and they coo a lot. Every time I hear a Mourning Dove coo, I feel nostalgic for some wonderful day in the country.

I walk back past topiaries of miniature apple trees with red fruit swinging from limbs – very colorful and looking deliciously succulent. I arrive back at the bowling green and walk down the greens toward the statue. Nothing feels like a flowering, cozy cottage garden, so popular in the Cotswolds. This is a remotely intellectual garden which has been carved out of a large farm. And I don’t yet know the extent of the gardens until I walk to the left from the greens where I discover a damp, shaded path. I walk down the dark path through the woods when I come upon a statue of Mercury, mythological message god. The figure is darkened by the dense tree cover and a patina of age. I feel uncomfortable about setting up my easel and camp stool on the wet, sloping bank. I am about to walk on when I see what is a truly lovely English phenomenon – a black swan with a bright orange-red beak gliding down the rushing stream.

Then I see a white swan. So I follow them along the stream and wonder where they originated. Later I learn that all swans belong to the Queen but are allowed to use streams which flow into the Thames. Then, once a year, the Queen’s swan guards put on black hats and hold a roundup of swans on the Thames. At “Swans Up,” the swans are tagged by the Queen’s men – perhaps reestablishing the Queen’s right of possession.

I continue along the sloping path and come to a structure with columns and insets designed to display more statues. But those statues are not there, so I continue on until I come to a temple in a large field. A five-sided pool is filled with water lilies.

Pan, mythological god of gardens.

As I walk, I hold up my 3"x4"cardboard viewer to get some ideas for good compositions to paint. I am anxious about finding a good composition for a plein air painting. I am taking too much time strolling through yellow grass, up overgrown slopes and under low-hanging trees when I should set up my easel and paint. I feel pressured. At the same time, I don’t want to miss anything at Rousham Manor; I want to see the entire garden. So, I walk up from the pool on a steep hill where I see one of my favorite mythological figures – Pan, mythological god of gardens. He holds his musical pipes as if he is about to call in all of the woodland spirits. He stands too high on a pedestal and I can’t find a good view or place to paint Pan.

Out in open gardens, the sun is beating bright and I long for a shady spot on level ground to set my easel. I have brought a sandwich to munch, but I am more concerned about fulfilling my mission of capturing the essence of this garden. I must make a decision. So I retrace my steps and make quick sketches. This is a difficult garden; its essence defies me. I want to paint something which personifies this huge farm-like garden. But, where?

Then it dawns on me this English garden is cut from rolling farmland and while it is picturesque, it is not visually laid out so that one view leads to another as I move along the paths. The big areas don’t seem to offer more than big views of yellow grass. Only sprinkling of magnificent statues appear momentarily.

"Mercury and the Swans" (Rousham Manor)

I am about to give up on Rousham when suddenly I remember Mercury looking out over the stream where swans glide by on this lazy autumn afternoon. With hope and a promise to myself, I pick up my painting satchels and head down the dark descending path to Mercury’s stand. I take out charcoal and white chalk and do one-minute thumbnail sketches to define dark, grey and white areas. This is going to be a painting based on light and shade and is called chiaroscuro. I try many angles. If I stand behind Mercury, I can get a view of the stream and swans, as well. I pick one of the quick charcoal sketches to enlarge into an oil painting composition. The black Mercury stands against the light background where the stream and trees are still drenched in sunlight – a perfect composition, I think.
But where will I stand my easel, place my palette and brushes, and proceed, as I stand in wet leaves. But I will do anything for a good painting. So, I stand up my easel, balanced on the side of the hill and begin to do an under drawing on canvas of the statue. The statue is difficult to draw and the landscape beyond feels distant and so disconnected.

After an hour of work completed, Joe Hawkins, chief gardener at Shugborough Hall, approaches. We begin chatting about gardens and he shares his passion for Asian gardens.

“Chinese and Japanese gardens are especially interesting because they are designed in terms of time passing rather than perspective,” Joe says. “The Chinese set up a garden so that every step or two allows one to see a different scene. The Chinese seek a sonorous change and variation.”

“And I think this is different from Rousham,” I say.

“That is because Rousham is called a landscaped garden,” Joe explains. “It is laid out like a ground plan with no interest in accommodating the strolling viewer. We viewers are expected to enter into the garden and see it as a plan, rather than as an experience on the human scale. This garden is shaped for God to see from above.”

Joe continues on his garden journey. I pack up my painting gear and lug it back to the rose garden with the dovecote. I quickly sketch a long row of roses and large mums – all of varying shades of red, pink, and white. I paint just as quickly – like an Impressionist painter, almost abstractly – in hopes of completing the painting before Steve arrives. Flower painting is a throwback to my earlier period in Santa Fe, NM, where I was influenced indirectly by Georgia O’Keeffe to paint large flowers on decorative folding screens.

"Room of Bloom" (Rousham Manor)

I complete the painting; quickly pack up, wave goodbye to the doves and head for the front courtyard where Steve and Julian are loading two cockerels in boxes in Steve’s back seat. With cockerels cooing at my back, we whiz past the cattle, race along narrow country roads at dusk and return an hour later to Cirencester - 85 Pounds ($170) shorter. But Steve is worth every wild minute of our adventure together.This has been an expensive plein air painting trip through the heartland of the Cotswolds, but I am proud of having conquered the essence of Rousham Manor in Oxfordshire, England, on a chilly British autumn day.

For the rest of September, I repeat this adventure into English country gardens. Now I have 22 original and very special paintings to show in Villa dell’Artista, my art gallery. Some of my English paintings also are on exhibit at the Morris-Butler House during September. See them in my website under English Gallery.