Milestones of Science Books

GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques Fabien.

Observations sur l'histoire naturelle, sur la physique et sur la peinture. Avec des planches imprimées en couleur. Cet ouvrage renferme les secrets des arts, les nouvelles découvertes, & les disputes des philosophes & des artistes modernes.

Paris: Chez Delaguette, 1752.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002142

Vol. 1 (Part I-III) only. 4to (255 x 202 mm). 64, [2], 65-195 pp. 8 (of 11) color mezzotints (some folding) and 3 folding diagrams (lacking the colored plates to pp. 18 and 64 in part I and to p.72 in part II), separate titles to each part, first title printed in red and black, woodcut headpieces. Contemporary mottled calf, spine with two gilt-lettered morocco labels and 5 raised bands gilt in compartments (minor worming to joints, extremities rubbed, upper spine chipped), red-dyed edges, marbled endpapers. Text quite clean and crisp, occasional marginal browning and minor spotting, plates slightly browned in margins (3 plates stronger), marginal paper defects, tiny wormholes to gutter of last pages. Provenance: Everard Urbain De Fossoul (armorial bookplate "Fossoul Mambour de la Cite" to first flyleaf). Except for the 3 wanting plates a very good copy. ----

Nissen ZBI 1487; Anatomie de la Couleur 107; Brunet II:1597; Choulant-Frank, p. 273; Cohen-De Ricci, p. 427; Franklin, Early Colour Printing pp. 50-51. FIRST EDITION. 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.

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