The Art Of Painting Restored to its Simplest and Surest Principles

London, England: David Bogue. Good. 1849. 1st British Edition; 1st Printing. Hardcover. Color Illustrations; This book is in Good condition and was issued without a dust jacket. The book and its contents are in generally clean condition. The spine ends and corners of the book covers have some bumping, rubbing and wear. The covers have noticeable fading and spotting and has been well handled. The inner hinges are loose, as is the sewing. The text pages are generally clean. Both inner hinges are cracked and the front endpaper has been torn away. This copy includes a color frontispiece, a folded analytical chart of color, and 19 of 20 illustrated plates (one of which is various paintbrushes, the others are different color variations of a fold of cloth). One plate (featuring an artist's palate) is missing. "M. Libertat Hundertpfund, the historical painter at Augsberg, has published a work, entitled The art of Painting brought back to it's simplest and surest principles, in which a very valuable discovery has been applied to the practice of oil-painting, so as to render it comparatively easy, and to ground it on an intelligble theory. While he was busied with experiments to find out a better mode of imitating the transparency of the natural shadow, a glass prism fell into his hands. This was a source of great delight to him. The colours produced by it, and their operation on each other, became an engrossing subject of his thoughts; and on one occasion his fancy led him to imagine the three primitive colours, - red, blue, and yellow - springing like rays from the centre of a circle to three equidistant points in its circumference, and affecting the intermediate spaces there by producing their three derivative colours - purple, orange, and green. This was a mere play of imagination; for at the moment of its occurance, he had not any idea of the discovery up to which he was subsequently led." (the Year Book of Facts in Science and Art (1848) ) .