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Traité de la peinture au pastel, du secret d’en composer les crayons, et des moyens de le fixer; avec l’indication d’un grand nombre de nouvelles substances propres à la peinture à l’huile, & les moyens de prévenir l’altération des couleurs. Par M. P. R. de C.... C. à P. de L.

Paris: chez Defer de Maisonneuve, libraire, 1788.

Collation: 12mo: A–Q¹² (–Q11,12), 190 leaves, pp. 376 [4] (last page blank). Small woodcut device on title, woodcut head and tailpieces.
Condition: 164 x 96mm. Minor  staining at the top of a few leaves.
Binding: Contemporary pastepaper boards, paper spine label, red sprinkled edges. Worn but sound.
References: Massing 22; OCLC 5028147.
Price: £800

First edition. Author’s name supplied by Massing.

¶ The first French manual of pastel painting, an apparently little known treatise whose author has only recently been named. Pastel or crayon painting using dry pigments, in which colours are not mixed on the artists palette but built up on the paper, was not covered in the Encyclopédie. This omission, Chaperon explains, together with the artists’ suppliers secretiveness about the composition of their pastels, made a treatise on the subject a necessity. He begins with a history of the technique before giving detailed instructions and recipes. He deals at length with the utensils for making crayons, for fixing pastel drawings, and for treating them to look like oil paintings. There is a detailed index.