Ideas of the aesthetics of Lithuanian parks in the first half of the nineteenth century

Straipsnyje nagrinėjamos Lietuvos XIX a. pirmos pusės parkų estetinės idėjos. Daugiausia dėmesio skiriama Vilniaus universiteto profesoriaus Karolio Podčašinskio teoriniams darbams, kuriuose ieškota atsakymo, kuris parkas pranašesnis – geometrinis (vad. simetrinis) ar peizažinis. Architektas, pasitelkęs Paryžiaus Politechnikos mokyklos profesoriaus Jeano Nicolas Louis Durand’o utilitarinę doktriną, analizuoja kiekvieną parko elementą atskirai ir ieško atsakymo, koks pavidalas labiau atitinka savo paskirtį. Podčašinskis rekomenduoja ir geometrinio, ir peizažinio parko elementus, taip įteisindamas mišraus parko kompoziciją. Daugelyje Lietuvos dvarų sodybų įkurti būtent tokie – mišrios kompozicijos – parkai.The aim of this article is to reveal how landscape parks took root in Lithuania and to discuss their relation to geometrical parks in theoretical works. Until the early 19th century, there were no publications on parks in Lithuania and Poland. One of the first printed works about landscape parks was a book by Duchess Izabela Dorota Czartoryska (1746–1835), published in Polish in Wroclaw in 1805. In the book, landscape parks were praised, and geometrical (regular) parks were harshly criticized. The Lithuanian natural scientist and creator of parks Józef Strumiłło, the author of the work Northern Gardens, which went through seven editions, held a similar opinion. In the first half of the 19th century, theoretical works on parks by the professor of Vilnius University Karol Podczaszynski were published. They drew strongly on the utilitarian doctrine (utilitarian is beautiful) of the professor of the Paris Polytechnic School Jean-Nicolas- Louis Durand and the reflections of the English writer John Aikin. Podczaszynski divides the compositional whole of the park into five parts: 1) flower beds, 2) tree alleys, 3) landscaped areas, 4) small-scale architecture and sculpture, and 5) bodies of water. He analyzes each of them separately, looking for an answer what shape better corresponds to their function, and establishes that flower beds must be built in a symmetrical parterre in front of the manor house, and tree alleys must be planted in even rows, so that distant views of the environs would open along the door and window axes. Natural groves and roads should flank the park at the edges. Podczaszynski gave a theoretical grounding of a mixed composition of a park in landscape. In the first half of the 19th century, parks of this particular composition were dominant in Lithuanian manor estates. They retained some geometrical elements – regular parterres in front of the manor house and straight tree alleys, most often emphasizing the symmetry axis of the residence