'Picturesque Irony: Brideshead Revisited as an Artist Programme'

Abstract

Shot entirely on film and on location, Brideshead Revisited deploys a constellation of artworks to chart the story of a painter, Charles Ryder. At the centre of the programme’s aesthetic geography is Brideshead Castle (Castle Howard). The estate’s picturesque landscape garden is deployed to place an ironic distance between Ryder and the programme’s discourse. This paper will analyse the way in which the gardens at Brideshead and the landscapes painted by Ryder mark his transformation from a naïf to an arriviste narrator sick with nostalgia. In doing so, it will consider Brideshead Revisited as an artist programme.