This is an artist's book. Starting from the Chapter House entrance to Santa Maria de Alcobaca Abbey (Portugal), The Hospital for Wounded Angels describes a metaphysical journey in present and past time in which the narrator encounters her real and imaginary lovers. The images -- forty of them reproduced in full colour -- are stunning. From the cemetery island of San Michele (Venice) to the Grand Trianon (Versailles), from the Villa Medicae della Petraia (Florence) to the Palazzo Mansi (Lucca, Italy), the journey reveals a lush, romantic world in which the garden becomes, at the end, a symbol for Paradise.

Appended to the images the artist has included detailed background documentation on various sites such as Isola Bella, the Garzoni Gardens, Versailles, San Michele, Mantua ... biographical details on Bianca Cappello and Gabriele d'Annunzio ... as well as her thoughts on the underlying symbolism of garden structures and the problems of usage, maintenance and conservation of historic gardens. The book will appeal to the architectural, as well as the artistic communities and may even find an honoured place on the bookshelves of the novice gardener whose romantic world is limited to half a dozen tulips.

Jennifer Dickson had already established an international reputation as an artist before emigrating to Canada in 1969. Born in the Republic of South Africa in 1936, she studied at Goldsmiths' College School of Art (University of London, England) and was an associate of the prestigious graphic workshop Atelier 17 in Paris.

Her early work--The Secret Garden (1976) and Three Mirrors to Narcissus (1979)--challenged assumptions about gender and sexual roles in Western society. During the 1980s and 1990s she travelled extensively in England, France and Italy, focusing on the structure and symbolism of historic gardens. Beauty and its desecration became obsessions, culminating in The Last Silence--Pavane for a Dying World (1993-1997), part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

In 1976, Dickson was elected a Royal Academician (RA) by the Royal Academy of Arts, in London, England, the only Canadian in the 200-year history of this prestigious institution to have been so honoured. She is, in addition, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (London, England). She was named to the Order of Canada (CM) in 1995. She lives in Ottawa.

Jennifer Dickson's profile page