Aqua pictura. Illustrated by a series of original specimens... Exhibiting the works of the most approved modern water colour draftsmen, with their style & method of touch, engraved and finished in progressive examples

Additional information

Beautiful hand coloured aquatints! 2nd ed, c1818, title page and preface (2 leaves) and nineteen plates each with a page of descriptive text. Each of the plates come in four states; etched outline, aquatinted in India ink, the same with a yellow tint superimposed, and a fully hand coloured plate. Two of the plates are on one sheet; Haymakers and Study of a Landscape. The descriptive text discusses the author and gives a kind of paint by number guide to each plate with numerous hand-applied colour swatches as guides. The platers are dated 1818 except for three dated 1811 and 1812. In oblong, contemporary grey boards with publishers printed label on the front cover, very neatly rebacked and cornered in an appropriate straight-grain morocco with gilt lettering. Some occasional minor spotting and some slight old and faint water staining. Old crease down centre of title page, modern endpapers. Housed in a modern blue cloth up & over box, gilt spine titles. VG The idea of this work, Hassell's largest and most interesting publication, was to take a drawing by one of the most celebrated draughtsmen of the age, and to publish four prints showing progressive stages of the work. It is also one of the most elaborate of all early nineteenth-century drawing books. Of particular interest are the four Welsh plates: View of the River Wye; Llantony Abbey (Monmouthshire); Cadir Idris and Moel Siabod. (490*337 mm & 473*328 mm). (Abbey Life 140-for the 1st ed, also undated plates 1811-13. Tooley 248). 0