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Item #42998 Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings. Patrick SYME.
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Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings
Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings
Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings
Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings

Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing. Illustrated by Coloured Drawings

Edinburgh: Printed for William Blackwood, John Murray and Robert Baldwin, 1813. Folio. (12 x 9 3/4 inches). 6 stipple-engraved plates in three states, one in outline with two further hand-coloured examples (12 hand-coloured in total), watermarks Fellows 1808 and J Whatman 1812, printed prospectus tipped onto front pastedown.

Original boards rebacked, with printed label title to upper board

A finely preserved instructional flower-drawing manual by the Scottish artist Patrick Syme, using progressive plates to guide the student from outline engraving to finished colour plate.

Patrick Syme was one of the leading Scottish flower painters of his generation, active in Edinburgh as an artist and drawing master. Practical Directions for Learning Flower-Drawing belongs to the early nineteenth-century culture of artistic education in which botanical drawing, watercolour practice, and polite instruction overlapped. Its method is direct and practical: each flower subject is shown first as an outline, then in successive stages of hand-colouring, allowing the student to study form, modelling, and colour separately. The progressive plate format gives the work much of its appeal. The outline plates provide the structure of the drawing, while the coloured examples demonstrate the gradual building of tone and botanical character. This format places the book between a drawing manual and a small florilegium, with the finished plates preserving Syme's delicate handling of colour and form. Syme's interest in precise colour instruction would soon find broader expression in Werner's Nomenclature of Colours (1814), the influential colour guide adapted for use in the arts and sciences. This earlier manual shows the same concern with disciplined observation and accurate chromatic description, here applied to the teaching of flower drawing. The tipped-in prospectus is a valuable survival, preserving the original commercial and instructional framing of the work.

Nissen, 1928; Dunthorne, 297.

Item #42998

Price: $1,250.00

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