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KENNION, EDWARD. 1744-1809. An Essay on Trees in Landscape. London: Printed by T. Bensley for C. J. Kennion, 1815. image 1
KENNION, EDWARD. 1744-1809. An Essay on Trees in Landscape. London: Printed by T. Bensley for C. J. Kennion, 1815. image 2
Lot 69

KENNION, EDWARD. 1744-1809.
An Essay on Trees in Landscape. London: Printed by T. Bensley for C. J. Kennion, 1815.

11 December 2020, 10:00 EST
New York

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KENNION, EDWARD. 1744-1809.

An Essay on Trees in Landscape. London: Printed by T. Bensley for C. J. Kennion, 1815. Folio (362 x 292 mm). Hand-colored aquatint title vignette and 54 engraved plates (4 double-page), with the four double-page plates and one single-page plate hand-colored. Modern sprinkled half calf to style, morocco lettering piece on spine. Title page neatly remargined, repair at extreme inner margin of one plate, very minor dampstaining.

FIRST PRINTING, IN THE PREFERRED STATE, with four additional hand-colored double-page engravings. This copy printed on Whatman paper dated 1812. The work examines in minute detail the artistic rendering of trees, covering, among other things, their "characters," the particular characteristics of the various species (focusing primarily on oak, elm, and ash), and the practical approaches to the faithful replication of trees with drawings. As an artist, one of the chief virtues of Kennion was his insistence upon accuracy. As he tells us here, Kennion decried the general belief that the tree was "thought to be an object so fully delivered over to the will of the artist, and so little depending on any determinable character of lines of forms, that it may be represented in any manner." In fact, Kennion believed that with trees depicted genuinely upon "the principles of nature, it will be found that the reverse ... is the truth; and that no objects whatever require so much vigour, decision, and swiftness of execution, or can so little bear retouching, ragged and smeary daubing, or any thing that shall muddle or injure the rich transparency and lightness for which the foliage of trees is so particularly remarkable." Abbey Life 147.

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