Last week, I reviewed a gorgeous summery show of garden and landscape paintings by quintessential English artist Stanley Spencer at Compton Verney. But that’s not all you get when you go this summer to this award-winning gallery in a Georgian mansion in beautiful ‘Capability’ Brown landscaped grounds.

‘Capability’ Brown — or Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-83), the designer of Compton Verney’s and many other now thought quintessentially English grounds and views — is the focus of a second exhibition here, the first to look at this internationally-renowned landscape designer.

Smaller and necessarily denser than the Spencer show, ‘Capability’ Brown and the landscapes of Middle England uses guns, maps, paintings and manuals to bring Brown, the man and his genius to life through a series of case studies from the Midlands. In a 30-year career, Brown worked on 170 estates, so the curators (led by Compton Verney’s director, Georgian expert Dr Parissien) pare things down to nearby landscapes: Croome, Charlecote Park, Coombe Abbey and Compton Verney itself. Blenheim features with two views and a 1770 plan showing the edge of Woodstock (planned alterations that were never carried out). A timeline in the informative little hand guide lists other parks Brown worked on, Oxfordshire’s Ditchley and Kirtlington among them, and Stowe, Buckinghamshire (his first).

Compton Verney, near Banbury, is an ideal location for this delightful pair of shows — though, harking back to Spencer for a moment, that particular English genius would have hated the artificial ‘naturalness’ of Brown’s landscapes.

(www.comptonverney.org.uk)