COX, David. A Treatise on Landscape Painting and Effect in Water Colours: from the first rudiments to the finished picture: with examples in outline, effect, and colouring.
oblong folio. Printed for and published by S. and J. Fuller, at the Temple of Fancy, Rathbone Place; and sold by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown; Sherwood, Neely, and Jones; and Gale and Curtis, Paternoster-Row; and by all Booksellers in Town and Country. 1813-1814.
First edition, second issue. Title, dedication, advertisement leaf, 5-32 descriptive pages of text and illustrated with 24 lithograph plates, 16 sepia aquatint plates and 16 hand coloured aquatint plates- some of the latter on grey paper as issued. Paper watermarked 1812. Handsomely leather bound in half period calf over marbled boards with the original ornate leather lettering label on the upper board. Ownership name of James Gibson 1829 on the front end paper. A chip to the outer corner of one sepia plate and some outer marginal discolouration but a very good copy, and certainly one of the best examples we have sold. The last copy we sold was in 2002.
~ This is Cox’s major work and is described by Tooley as “the best and most important of the early drawing books.” “The care with which the aquatints were thought out is revealed by impressions which have not received the colour washes usually added by a team of colourmen after models prepared by the artist himself. Such impressions do not in fact make sense without this colour; they can be seen in volumes made up of the plates of the Treatise as republished in 1840-1841.” (ref: Wildman, S. David Cox, 1983). Errors in the numbering of the plates were corrected in the 2nd issue, and the plate depicting convict hulks was also replaced with a scene of haymaking and reaping in the later issue.
Provenance: James Gibson, probably a relation of Francis Gibson. In another art instruction volume published in 1825 their signatures were on the same page. Francis Gibson (c.1803 - 1858). He lived for many years at “The Close”, High Street, Saffron Walden. He was a partner in Gibson’s Bank, now amalgamated with Barclay’s, and built the Fry Art Gallery to hold his collection of pictures, formed mostly by purchase between 1830 and the year of his death in 1859; his daughter, Elizabeth, had married the Bristol MP Lewis Fry. He was an enthusiastic amateur artist.