| The Turkish tent stood at the entrance to Henry Hoare's garden at Stourhead from the 1760s to 1792. While Stourhead remains a masterpiece of Georgian England's most innovative art form, the landscape garden, the Turkish tent has received little more than a mention in the histories of Stourhead. There is no doubt that had the Turkish Tent and other exotic features survived the nineteenth century, the accounts of Stourhead would read very differently today. As Henry Hoare situated the Turkish tent (and other oriental features) spatially and conceptually on the eastern slopes the Stourhead circuit garden, this dissertation seeks to restore some of its former prominence.;Turkish tents in England have never been defined as a class of garden pavilions. Like other so-called Turkish tents in eighteenth-century Britain, the Stourhead Turkish Tent was a permanent structure designed to look like a portable Ottoman tent. It overlooked the lakeside garden and was the most prominent feature in the panoramic view from both the Grotto and the Pantheon. The genre of Turkish tents as garden pavilions was initiated at Vauxhall Gardens where ambiance and diversions referenced contemporary nighttime entertainments at the Ottoman Porte, the Topkapi Palace and other sites in Tulip Era Constantinople. The Painshill Turkish Tent, commissioned by Richard Hamilton and designed by architect Henry Keene, transitioned the Vauxhall model to a rural pleasure garden setting.;Turkish tents in Britain were indebted, formally and conceptually, to popular culture and publications. Turquerie fashions in portraiture (human and equine), fancy dress costumes, livery for servants and grooms, interior decoration and theatre all constitute aspects of the cultural climate of the Stourhead Turkish tent. As Henry Hoare purchased books on Ottoman culture and travel in the Levant by subscription, we know that his orientalist interest began early and were sustained throughout his life. Images from Henry Hoare's books suggest source material he used to create his own Turkish tent, closely related to the tent captured by Jan Sobieski, King of Poland, at the Siege of Vienna in 1683. Henry Hoare possessed significant insight into genuine Ottoman architecture.;The meanings associated with Turkish tents in Britain are initially straightforward: they evoke notions of Ottoman military prowess and defeat, and they also recall the indulgent lifestyle of the Sultan and his family in the gardens of the Topkapi Palace and wherever they might travel in a palace of tents. In the special interplay of features at Stourhead, eighteenth-century visitors and authors Henry Hoare admired nuanced these themes. The Turkish tent could also suggest notions of cultural authenticity, industry versus idleness, and warnings about British watchfulness. In the end, the Turkish Tent and the exotic features at Stourhead only enhance the emblematic, iconographic and semiotic readings of previous interpreters. |
