Landscape designers of the Romantic era learned to respect the inherent beauty of nature, which they believed to have been stifled by the rigidly symmetrical formal gardens of the ancient régime. Free spirits in more ways than one, Romantics looked to nature as a liberating force, a source of sensual pleasure, moral instruction, religious insights, and artistic inspiration. The Morgan Library & Museum has assembled an array of texts and works of art that reveal the origins and impact of these stylistic innovations in a broad cultural context, roughly from 1700 to 1900. Romantic Gardens provides an overview of these groundbreaking ideas and shows how they were implemented in private estates and public parks in England, France, Germany, and America.--[book jacket].