[Rarebooks] fa: [SCOTLAND] WILLIAM GILPIN - OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY 1792

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 24. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/t3pjr78

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Gilpin: Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, made in the Year 1776, on Several Parts of Great Britain; particularly the High-lands of Scotland. Second edition. London: Printed for R. Blamire, Strand, MDCCXCII [1792]. Two volumes, 8vo (22.5 cm), in early/period half russia and marbled boards, spines lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers; vii, [1], xi, [1], 221 pp.; [2], 195, [1], xvi pp.; with 40 plates (complete).

The forty plates are mostly tinted aquatints after Gilpin’s designs, but also include several sketches and hand-colored maps. William Gilpin (1724-1804) was an English cleric, essayist and watercolorist who arguably did more than anyone else to popularize the aesthetic ideal of the "picturesque" in nature and art. In his "account of the plates" at the end of vol. II, Gilpin freely confesses that "few of them pretend to be exact portraits. They in general only characterize the countries through which the reader is carried...and...when I have seen a line out of place, I have a great propensity to correct it by one that is more picturesque." A bookseller’s note loosely laid in by a previous owner asserts that "the plates are, for the most part, clearly re-engraved [from the first edition] to give a darker and more detailed aspect to the images."

A superior example of a handsomely printed work: bindings with only very modest wear; some generally light offsetting from the plates to the text leaves opposite, one leaf with a closed tear at fore-edge not affecting the text; else very clean, fresh and bright, firmly bound. Front paste-downs with the small, tasteful book labels of P. R. Glazebrook.