Rudiments of Drawing, Shadowing, and Colouring Flowers in Water Colours; Contained in Thirty-Six Instructive Lessons ... Intended for Beginners and Students of this Delightful Art. With a Description of Colours Used & the Method of Mixing them

Description:

First edition. Very rare.

Nissen BBI 1946

Gaetano Testolini (Fl. 1760-1818) was a printmaker, publisher and frame maker who also acted as a supplier of artists' materials. Born in Italy, he was invited in 1785, to move to London to work with the artist Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815). Later Testolini established a business at No.73, Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange, London. The allegorical frontispiece in this work advertises a range of art materials he has for sale including 'water colour of the best… Chemical Colours for maps, plans…Foreign & English Chalk…Portfolios of all sizes'. He states he can provide ' every article required in Drawing, or Painting, and the whole of the quality that cannot be surpassed'. It is in this commercial setting that Testolini printed this delightful instructional work which 'contains 45 Lessons, beginning from the Outline of a Single Leaf to the finishing of a fine Group: it is besides so arranged, as to afford instruction to beginners, and improvement to the more advanced in the Art'. Aquatints depict various stages in the drawing process, from outline, to shaded with fine-grained aquatint and completed watercolour.

Bibliographers have highly regarded this work,:

G. Dunthorne; ‘..perhaps the finest of all drawing books of the period’.

Prideaux; 'is of importance as being one of the very few books in which aquatint was used for the illustration of botanical subjects. Both the drawing and the colouring of the flowers are beautiful: some of the tints are put on by hand'.

Blunt; '…said to be very fine, but I have not been able to see a copy'.

Plesch; 'rare, beautiful and a delight to the eyes.'

Condition

Oblong folio (250x395mm), cont. red half morocco over marbled boards, orig. red morocco title label to upper cover ('Rudiments of flower drawing in water colours'), rubbed, some loss to foot of spine; front hinge weak; both free endpapers spotted and creased, the front detached, the rear torn.