Lancelot "Capability" Brown

Lancelot "Capability" Brown
Capability Brown, by Nathaniel Dance, ca. 1773 (National Portrait Gallery)
Birth name	Lancelot Brown
Born	baptised 30 August 1716 Kirkharle, Northumberland
Died	6 February 1783 London
Parents	William Brown and Ursula, nee Hall
Spouse	Bridget Wayet
Occupation	Gardener, Landscape Architect

Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known with the byname Capability Brown, was an English landscape architect. He is remembered as "the last of the great English 18th century artists to be accorded his due", and "England's greatest gardener". He designed over 170 parks, many of which still endure. He was nicknamed "Capability" because he would tell his clients that their property had "capability" for improvement.

His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's apologist Horace Walpole allowed that Kent had been followed by "a very able master".

Lancelot Brown was born as a land agent's and chambermaid's fifth child in the village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at Cambo School until he was 16. Brown’s father had been Sir William Loraine’s land agent and his mother in service at Kirkharle Hall. His eldest brother John became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. Elder brother George became a mason-architect.

After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall till he was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south arriving at the port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Then he moved further inland where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire. He moved to Wotton Underwood House, Buckinghamshire, seat of Sir Richard Grenville.