Picturesque Aesthetics: Theorising Deformity in the Romantic Era

The picturesque theorists disagree vehemently over whether the picturesque deformity that can be appreciated in buildings and landscapes could also be appreciated in people with deformities, be these people real or represented. William Gilpin writes about ruins and people in ways that suggest that they possess the same aesthetic value. Fitness for representation is Gilpin’s criterion for a certain type of aesthetic appreciation, and, using this criterion, he regards picturesque deformity in a positive light. Uvedale Price, however, offers the idea that beauty, the picturesque, and deformity exist on a continuum, making deformity a question of degree. The quality of being striking enables Price to think of people and things as giving aesthetic pleasure in the same way. Drawing on Addison’s aesthetics, Richard Payne Knight makes a distinction between real and represented deformity. Knight argues, like Percy Shelley, that art has a transformative power that makes deformity aesthetically pleasing. The picturesque theorists are concerned with reconciling deformity (as a quality of the picturesque) with the aesthetic pleasure that derives from it.