The Art of Painting
London: Thomas Payne, 1754. London, Thomas Payne, 1754, Hardcover
THE ART OF PAINTING: With the Lives and Characters of above 300 of the most Eminent Painters: containing a
complete treatise of painting, designing, and the use of prints. With reflexions on the works of the most celebrated masters, and of the several schools of Europe, as well ancient as modern. Being the most perfect work of the kind extant. Translated from the French of Monsieur De Piles. To which is added, An Essay towards an English School. The third edition: in which is now first inserted the life of Sir Godfrey Kneller, by the late B. Buckeridge, Esq; who wrote the greatest part of the English School. Printed for Thomas Payne. London. (1754?). Roger de Piles His important contribution to aesthetic theory rests on his Dialogue sur le coloris ("Dialogue on colours"), in which he initiated his famous defence of Rubens in the argument started in 1671 by Philippe de Champaigne on the relative merits of drawing and color in the work of Titian (in a lecture to the Académie de peinture et de sculpture on Titian's Virgin and Child with St John.). Bound in full speckled calf with full gilt re-back into contemporary boards. Heavy browning to the edges of the title page new period endpapers, and browning to the edges of the last two pages.
This volume comprises of 5 parts, The art of Painting, The Lives of Eminent Painters, The Lives of Venetian Painters, The Lives of the Lombard Painters and The Lives of the German and Flemish Painters. The argument is most fascinating as an early debate on classic vs modern in painting; in essence on the mathematics of proportion and perspective in drawing—the classic approach— as opposed to the colored brush stroke—the approach of the moderns. In his detailed study of the argument, Roger de Piles et les débats sur le coloris au siècle de Louis XIV (1965), B. Teyssèdre gives a touching account of the bohème of the "modern" réfusés in seventeenth century Paris, a history that was to repeat itself with the Impressionists. Item #273
Price (USD): $410.00