Humphry Repton | Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 1803

Humphry Repton

Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. London: T. Bensley [...] for J. Taylor, at the Architectural Library, High Holborn, 1803

FIRST EDITION, folio, 11 handcoloured aquatint plates (9 with overlays, and 1 folding), 14 engraved plates (mostly aquatint, some tinted, 3 with overlays, 1 double-page) and 2 engraved maps (1 hand-coloured), 11 aquatint vignettes and illustrations in text, 2 with overlays, frontispiece portrait, wood-engraved illustrations, half calf on marbled boards, binding scuffed, library stamps, folding aquatint plate with short tears and tape repairs, spotting to preliminaries

"The present work neither supersedes, nor contradicts my former work [see previous lot], neither is a repetition nor a continuation; but to avoid the oblong and inconvenient shape of that book the present volume is printed under a different form and title, because I am less ambitious of publishing a book of beautiful prints, than a book of precedents: I must therefore intreat that the plates be rather considered as necessary than ornamental; they are introduced to illustrate the arguments, rather than attract the attention. I wish to make my appeal less to the eye, then to the understanding." (Advertisement)

PROVENANCE:

Joseph Grubb of Clonmel, ownership inscription and bookplate; Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893-1974), bookplate

LITERATURE:

Abbey, Scenery, 390