William Kent (1685 ~ 1748), an aesthete, painter, gardener and architect, was a pioneer of landscape architecture in the second half of the18th century. He once learned from a teacher how to make a carriage. 1709, with the help of his friends, he was able to learn painting in Italy. But he didn't achieve ideal results in painting. 17 19 years after returning to China, he met Pope by chance, and then he came up with the idea of leaning towards landscape architecture, becoming bridgman's successor. bridgman abandoned the regular form and turned to the irregular form to some extent. As walpole said, he built a relatively complete system from the imperfect gardening theory, and found that all nature that crossed the hedge was a garden. Because he studied painting, he can describe the scenery in Britain, and he is also good at turning the scenery in landscape oil paintings into gardens in the real world.

Henry Homer commented in Critical Element * * * (1762): "Gardening in Kent is like painting on canvas, with beautiful natural objects and artificial objects." With the slogan of "Natureabhors a straight line", he broke the old style in details, rejected all straight garden roads, roadside trees, fountains and hedges, leaving only irregular pools and curved rivers. He really copied nature, and it is said that he even planted dead trees in Kensington Garden, which is still an anecdote today. His famous work is "Zysk House" designed for his benefactor Lord Burlington. Then he added the design of "Stowe Garden" built by bridgman and Van Brin, making him more famous.

There are many gardens designed by him, except Asher Garden, clermont Garden, Wilton House, Carlton House, Rushham Garden and Gunnsbury Garden.

As an art expert in British upper class, Kent has worked, lived and studied painting in Italy for 10 years. Although he is just an ordinary painter himself, to a certain extent, he is recognized as a genius with very high appreciation ability. A few years after Kent returned to his hometown, Sir burlington got about one, maybe two 36-picture copper prints of the royal garden in Jehol (now Chengde) from the Italian Catholic missionary matteo Ripa. A picture book later deposited in the British Museum (Oriental Antiquities Department) is bound in red Moroccan leather, bearing the imprint of Chiswick Hall Library, Sir Burlington's residence. Ripa has never been in England for 1 month, but he has obviously established contact with Sir Burlington and his circle of friends who are keen on the new garden style. Although there is no record, I think there is no doubt that Kent must have seen this bronze album, and even he collected this second one. As a result, the ignited spark has spread from generate to Kent. My first impression of Chengde was like a landscape garden in England, although I didn't know that Kent might have seen Chengde's copper plate paintings.

Emperor Kangxi began to build Chengde Royal Garden in 1703, and171~1712 wrote 36 poems to praise it. He asked the painter Shen Yuan to decorate these poems with illustrations. It is based on these paintings that matteo Ripa made his exquisite bronze album (during this period, he may have gone through the process of being processed into China woodcuts). Today, people have to think that, fortunately, William Kent only saw 36 paintings in a garden, because this did not lead to the adoption of China's garden style as a model. But what Kent has seen has made him understand that it is not difficult to transplant a landscape into the garden by carefully observing it from the perspective of painting. In this way, the era of landscape architecture in Britain, or more precisely in Europe, began.

Since 1727, natural landscape gardens have sprung up, or natural landscapes have been added on the basis of the original gardens. If Pope and Addison called for "primitive nature", then Kent and his followers only carried it out to a limited extent. But people will never give up the aesthetics of that era and get rid of those towers, pavilions and caves. For a long time, there were few pictures from China, and people were forced to create their own. Because the architectural part of the garden is easier to introduce through pictures. A young man named W. William W.Chambers made an accurate measurement and record of the buildings in China in Guangzhou, so that the buildings in the garden sometimes reached amazing accuracy in the future, but the landscape images were still taken from the British model.

He is also in charge of the merger project of Downing Street 10 and "House behind the Palace". He built a two-story connection between the two buildings, and there was a corridor in it to connect the two buildings together, which was called the "Ministry of Finance Corridor". The underground connecting the object is a long room, and the first floor is divided into several rooms. After the merger of houses, Kent demolished all the original walls, floors, stairs and stoves and completely replaced them with new styles. Among them, the newly-built three-story stone staircase is Kent's masterpiece. The stone staircase was rebuilt on the main body of the original Downing Street 10, with iron railings and mahogany handrails. The stone staircase is near the entrance of Downing Street 10, obviously. Today, I walked up the stairs and hung portraits of the Prime Minister from Sir robert walpole to Ma Andre.

William Kent was succeeded by his senior gardener Lancelot.