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Item #43000 Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them. Gaetano TESTOLINI.
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Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them
Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them
Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them
Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them
Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them

Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons, Illustrated by Twenty-Nine Plates, from the outline of a single leaf progressively to the completion of a fine group; Intended for Beginners and Students of This delightful Art: with a description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing Them

London: H.K. Causton for G. Testolini, 1818-[1822]. Oblong folio. (10 5/8 x 16 1/2 inches). Aquatint frontispiece, 29 engraved and aquatint plates (15 hand-coloured), hand-coloured table of colours, watermark C Brenchley 1814, Ruse & Turners 1815, and J. Whatman Turkey Mill 1822.

Modern red half morocco over contemporary marbled boards, with gilt-decorated brown morocco title label to upper board

Provenance: Library of Hanna Strauss Weil (1921-2011), German-born British painter and teacher

A finely conceived botanical drawing manual, moving from the outline of a single leaf to finished flower groups through progressive lessons in drawing, shadow, and watercolour.

Testolini's Rudiments is among the most accomplished English drawing books of the early nineteenth century, designed to teach flower painting through a carefully staged visual sequence. The lessons begin with the simplest botanical forms and proceed toward more complex compositions, showing how outline, tonal modelling, and colour could be built into a finished watercolour. The method is practical and cumulative, with the plates functioning both as examples and as exercises for direct imitation. The work is especially notable for its use of aquatint in botanical instruction. Where many drawing manuals relied chiefly on outline or stipple, Testolini used aquatint to demonstrate the modelling of shadow and the gradations required in watercolour. The plates present flowers in progressive states, from linear drawing to shaded form and completed colour, allowing the student to see technique as a sequence of decisions. The hand-coloured table of colours further anchors the book in studio practice, giving the beginner a working guide to pigments and mixtures. Dunthorne described Rudiments as "perhaps the finest of all drawing books of the period," a judgement that reflects both the refinement of its plates and the clarity of its teaching method. Testolini's reliance on aquatint gives the work a particularly subtle treatment of tone, depth, and petal form. Rudiments is one of the few books in which aquatint is used to illustrate botanical subjects. Each flower is shown in three states, outline, aquatint and hand-coloured. Provenance: Hanna Strauss Weil, generally known as Hanna Weil, was a German-born British painter and long-serving teacher at St Martin's School of Art. A manual devoted to the disciplined teaching of flower drawing and watercolour sits naturally within the library of an artist whose own career joined painting and instruction.

Dunthorne 300; Nissen BBI 1946.

Item #43000

Price: $4,500.00

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