Lot n° 165

HAMILTON, John.

Estimation : 500 - 800 €
Adjudication : Invendu
Description
Stereography, or A Compleat Body of Perspective, in all its Branches. Teaching to describe by Mathematical Rules, the Appearance of Lines, Plain Figures, and Solid Bodies, Rectilinear, Curvilinear, and Mixed, in all Manner of Positions. Together with their Reflections by
Polished Planes. Londres, pour l'auteur par W. Bowyer, 1738. 2 tomes en 1 volume in-folio (400 x 244 mm) de 9 ff.n.ch. dont la liste des souscripteurs, 208 pp., planches gravées numérotées 1-44 pour le volume I; 1 f.n.ch. de titre, pp. 209-400, 37 pp. de table, planches gravées numérotées 45-130 (231 figures au total) pour le volume II; demi-veau moderne.
Vagnetti EIVb24; Lowndes, II, 988; manque au Kat. Berlin; Vitry, 438 et 439.
Édition originale de cet important traité de perspective.
La Stereography est une adaptation très complète des théories de Brook Taylor, que John Hamilton admirait énormément. Il en fait l'éloge dans sa préface: “In composing this work, I have freely made use of all such materials as I could find any where fit for my purpose, and in particular have taken such assistance and hints as were furnished me by Dr. Brook Taylor's two small treatises on this subject published some years since, in which that learned gentleman has, in a few pages, made more real advances towards presenting the science, than all the writers who were before him”.
L'ouvrage de Hamilton, basé exclusivement sur les aspects mathématiques de la perspective fut une source très importante pour le développement de cette science en Angleterre.
Il semblerait que le peintre William Turner ait consulté l'ouvrage de Hamilton pour ses études de perspective (Tate Gallery, «Diagrams of Harmonic Proportions after John Hamilton»).
Exemplaire de travail, titre sali, feuillets cornés, petites traces de vers.
Provenance: Blackheath School Library (cachets).
Rare first edition of this very important work on perspective by John Hamilton. His work was of major importance for the mathematical theories of perspective and it even appears that the painter William
Turner consulted the book around 1809 (Tate Gallery, «Diagrams of Harmonic Proportions, after
John Hamilton»).
Partager