Liber Nauticus
The Liber Nauticus is a textbook on marine painting published in London in 1805 by the British painter John Thomas Serres . The full title of the book is Liber Nauticus and instructor in the art of marine drawing .
The book
The Liber Nauticus includes a collection of graphics by the French marine painter Dominic Serres and works by his son John Thomas Serres. John Thomas Serres was a Master of Drawing at the Chelsea Naval School in London. As part of his work as a drawing teacher, he put together graphics of ship parts for illustrative purposes, which were published from 1805 under the title Liber Nauticus and Instructor in the Art of Marine Drawing . The title of the work is inspired by a collection of pictures by the landscape painter Claude Lorrain , compiled as illustrative material , which was published as Liber Veritatis in the mid-17th century . In contrast to the Liber Nauticus , the commercially very successful compilation of Lorrain's annotated sketches was not originally intended for publication and was only published by his heirs after the artist's death.
Printing and publishing
Originally published Liber nauticus in ten books of each half guinea under the title Liber nauticum . The publication took place in the publishing house of the printer and engraver Edward Orme, who was based in London's Bond Street . The spelling mistake in the title continued in the work and was corrected in subsequent editions in which the correct s was printed over the ending m. The folio edition consisted of two parts. The first part contained seventeen graphics, five of which were made in aquatint . The second part comprised 24 graphics, some of them colored. These graphics by Liber Nauticus were made by engravers based on Dominic Serres' pictures. Some of the illustrations were made in aquatint, which shows the swell but also the coastline in the background. Another special feature of the motifs in Liber Nauticus is that Dominic Serres not only depicted one ship at a time, but also always depicted several others in the elaborated background. Accordingly, the publisher Edward Orme announced when it was published that “every type of ship currently sailing the seas” could be seen.
Structure and content
The Liber Nauticus consists of two parts. The graphics of the first part show parts of the ship, such as parts of the rigging or sections of the deck as well as the masts and sails. In addition, typical measures that can be carried out on board a ship, such as stacking cargo or using a mast, were presented. The more technical representations were supplemented by explanatory pictures, which show different stages of the sea and were printed in aquatint. The printing plates made by the engravers John Clark, Richard Harradan and Joseph Constantine Stadler bear, like the title page, the year 1805, so that it is assumed that the first part of the Liber Nauticus was published before the end of the year. All pictures of the first part of the Liber Nauticus were made by John Thomas Serres, who also contributed the descriptive text. Using the illustrations, which are based on the works of his father, the author explains in the second part of the book how various details of the rigging and hull , which are explained in the first part, can be combined to represent a ship. The printing plates were made according to Dominic Serres' templates in 1806 and 1807 by engravers John Clark and Joseph R. Hamble. The aquatint prints are provided with short explanatory texts. In addition to additional ships, the respective background of the images contains recognizable landscapes and harbors, as indicated by titles such as "A scooter with a view of New York " or "Dutch galliot with a view of Amsterdam ".
Aftermath
William Turner , Serres' contemporary and most important British artist of his era, followed up on the naming with his own textbook on painting. Between 1806 and 1819 Turner published his Liber Studiorum in which he taught the basics of landscape painting . Turner's project, however, was not a financial success. The term Liber Nauticus became known to the wider public through the paperback editions of the Adventures of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. In the books of the author Patrick O'Brian , Serres' "Ship of the line" explains the rigging of a full ship at the time of the Napoleonic Wars on the first page .
literature
- Alan Russett: Dominic Serres War artist to the navy. Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge 2001, ISBN 1-85149-360-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Entry on Liber Nauticus on the Royal Collection Trust website , accessed on April 11, 2019.
- ^ A b W. G. Rawlinson: "Turner's Liber Studiorum A Description and a Catalog" , MacMillian & Co, London 1878, pp. 2-12
- ^ Monthly Magazine or British Register, Volume XIX, Part 1 for 1805 , Sir Richard Philips, London 1805, p. 169
- ^ Edward Orme invested in urban development in addition to his activities as a publisher, printer and engraver. The Orme Square in London's Bayswater is therefore named after him.