View of Sherringham Bower, Norfolk. c.1816. by: Humphry Repton

Paul Daniel Marriott, an assistant professor in Penn State’s Department of Landscape Architecture, will serve as a featured speaker at an international symposium centered around the contributions of 18th century landscape designer Humphry Repton on Jan. 31 at the Garden Museum in London.

The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has teamed up with the museum to offer “Repton Revived: The Landscape Gardner’s Legacy and Influence,” which commemorates the bicentenary of Repton’s death, with a focus on his Red Books of designs. The symposium looks to explore how Repton and his work have been “recalled, restored and refashioned” in the two centuries since his death in 1818. Contributors of the event will examine the legacy that Repton’s landscape design has left both in England and beyond.

Repton created his famous Red Books (named so for their binding) to help visualize design concepts by using watercolor illustrations onto which his proposed alterations were overlaid. This allowed his clients to see the “before” and “after” views of a project.

A leading Repton scholar, Marriott’s research focuses on the influence Repton’s theories have had on landscape architecture in the United States.

Visit the Garden Museum’s conference website: