Featured on PDR in the collection “The Rainbow for their Guide”: Mary Gartside’s New Theory of Colours (1808)

Mary Gartside’s An Essay on a New Theory of Colours is the expanded edition of An Essay on Light and Shade (1805), “one of the rarest and most unusual books about colour ever published”, claims Alexandra Loske, a historian of colour and curator at Brighton’s Royal Pavilion. On the surface, this tract appears to sit neatly within the tradition of instructional artist’s manuals. Indeed, Mary Gartside worked as a watercolour teacher and botanical painter, exhibiting her drawings at the Royal Academy in 1781. And yet, the Essay makes use of an intellectual palette whose spectrum exceeds Gartside’s pedagogical contemporaries. It is best remembered, rather, as an exemplar of the myriad early-nineteenth century treatises on colour — works inspired, in part, by the newfound availability of…