![[GAUTIER d'AGOTY, Jacques. Observations sur l'histoire naturelle, sur la physique et sur la peinture. Paris: Chez Delaguette, 1752].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2007/NYR/2007_NYR_01885_0088_000(023505).jpg?w=1)
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[GAUTIER d'AGOTY, Jacques. Observations sur l'histoire naturelle, sur la physique et sur la peinture. Paris: Chez Delaguette, 1752].
Volume I (parts I-III) only, 4o (278 x 212 mm). 11 color mezzotints (some folding) and 3 folding diagrams (some even browning to plates). (Lacking title to part I [A1] and three leaves of text [D1-3].) Disbound, contemporary upper and lower wrappers (spine perished). Provenance: Dr. Samuel Koslov (his sale Christie's East, 12 November 1996, lot 223).
The first volume of this early and extremely rare journal of science and art--certainly the first periodical with plates printed in color. The volume contains some of the most dramatic of Gautier's images, including three rare and unusual plates of hermaphrodites, a surreal image of a human foetus in a glass realized in starling shades of green and blue; two plates of a tortoise (dissected and intact) and another of a sloth (intact and completely skinned); a brilliantly colored tulip in vibrant red and yellow; an American black bear and its cub; a monkey; a folding plate that illustrates the notions of space, the spheres, the spectrum, and Gautier's own color theory. The text contains articles on color printing, anatomy, the nature of space, a review of paintings exhibited at the Louvre (August 1751), and Gautier's objections to Newton's theory of color. When Goethe attacked Newton's color theory he found Gautier's arguments supportive of his own criticism, and discussed them sympathetically. VERY RARE IN ANY CONDITION: according to American Book Prices Current this work has sold at auction only three times (including the last time this copy appeared at the Koslov sale in 1996) in the last thirty years and all copies, like the present, were incomplete. Anatomie de la Couleur 107; Brunet II:1597; Choulant-Frank, p. 273; Cohen-De Ricci, p. 427; Franklin, Early Colour Printing pp. 50-51 (reproducing as plate XIV a later state of a plate than in the Edell copy); Nissen ZBI 1487.
Volume I (parts I-III) only, 4
The first volume of this early and extremely rare journal of science and art--certainly the first periodical with plates printed in color. The volume contains some of the most dramatic of Gautier's images, including three rare and unusual plates of hermaphrodites, a surreal image of a human foetus in a glass realized in starling shades of green and blue; two plates of a tortoise (dissected and intact) and another of a sloth (intact and completely skinned); a brilliantly colored tulip in vibrant red and yellow; an American black bear and its cub; a monkey; a folding plate that illustrates the notions of space, the spheres, the spectrum, and Gautier's own color theory. The text contains articles on color printing, anatomy, the nature of space, a review of paintings exhibited at the Louvre (August 1751), and Gautier's objections to Newton's theory of color. When Goethe attacked Newton's color theory he found Gautier's arguments supportive of his own criticism, and discussed them sympathetically. VERY RARE IN ANY CONDITION: according to American Book Prices Current this work has sold at auction only three times (including the last time this copy appeared at the Koslov sale in 1996) in the last thirty years and all copies, like the present, were incomplete. Anatomie de la Couleur 107; Brunet II:1597; Choulant-Frank, p. 273; Cohen-De Ricci, p. 427; Franklin, Early Colour Printing pp. 50-51 (reproducing as plate XIV a later state of a plate than in the Edell copy); Nissen ZBI 1487.