The Temperley Collection

Lot 290 - Barlow (Francis). Sixty-Seven Excellent and Useful Prints of Birds and Beasts, [circa 1760]

The Artist at School: The Temperley Collection of Artist's Drawing Books & Manuals 1650-1900

The education of the artist exercised the minds of major artists from the time of the Dutch Golden Age and the Carracci onwards, and led to the gradual establishment of systems for the learning of art, whether drawing, painting or printmaking. This in turn led to an outpouring, especially in England in the late 18th and early 19th century, of manuals and instructional books for both the professional artist and the keen amateur, many inspired by the Picturesque aesthetic developed in the late 18th century by William Gilpin (1724–1804), which sought ‘that peculiar kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’.

The Temperley Collection of English and European illustrated drawing books, put together by the renowned bookseller and collector David Temperley over a period of 50 years, includes important examples of these now rare publications, many of which were issued with coloured or tinted plates. Spanning three centuries of artistic styles, from the 17th century baroque, through 18th century works developed out of the recently established academies, to the Romantic movement, this remarkable collection of antiquarian works will be offered at auction by Dominic Winter Auctioneers on Wednesday 17 June 2026.

Highlights from The Temperley Collection include:

Lot 292 - Brookshaw (George). A New Treatise on Flower Painting, 1812

Henry, 518. An exceedingly rare work not recorded by Worldcat. It was first published anonymously in 1797 (Henry, 1167) and then under the pseudonym of G. Brown in 1799, 1801 and 1802. This is the first edition under Brookshaw's name. Brookshaw seems to have started as a cabinet maker and switched to drawing master in mid career (see Lucy Wood, ‘George Brookshaw: The case of the vanishing cabinet-maker’, Apollo, May 1991) 

Lot 307 - Claude Lorrain (Claude Gelée). Liber Veritatis, or, Collection of Two Hundred Prints..., 1777-1819

"This capital work, a landmark in the history of the reproduction of master drawings, is ... an important forerunner of later publications in this section. It contains 300 reproductions of drawings by Claude Lorrain, pastoral, mythological, and biblical subjects, and was called Liber Veritatis [Book of Truth] for the purpose of identifying Claude's genuine works from forgeries, or from drawings wrongly attributed to the master. They are all printed in a warm bistre colour to aid the resemblance..., This is the first complete edition with the engravings in the best and final state..., The catalogues in each volume give a comprehensive description of each drawing, indicating also for whom they were executed, which pictures were painted from them, and the ownership at the date of publication of the book—in short, a real catalogue raisonné" (Abbey).

Lot 333 - Laporte (John). The Progress of a Water-Coloured Drawing, [circa 1805]

An early issue of Laporte’s work, predating the circa 1811 issue listed by Abbey, with 'Reader' instead of 'Learner' in the title. Progress of a Water-Coloured Drawing is an ‘outstanding example of the progress of a single drawing. He starts with a soft-ground etching … which shows the outline drawing. Subsequent stages are progressively coloured to the fourteenth which shows the finished watercolour. Stage 14 was therefore coloured thirteen times, making a total of ninety-one hand colourings for each copy of the book’ (Fitzwilliam Museum, From Gilpin to Ruskin).

Lot 357 - Sanderson (William). Graphice· Or, The use of the pen and pensil, 1st edition, 1658

A complete copy with all the three portraits by William Faithorne, which are often missing. An important early treatise divided into two parts. Part I is entitled ‘The Use of the Pen and Pensil; in the most Excellent Art of Painting’ and covers oil painting, while part II covers ‘The Use of the Pensil: in the most Excellent Art of Limning, in Water-Colours’.

Lot 366 - Tijou (M.). A New Book of Flowers. By M. Tijou, [circa 1775]

Only known copy of this unrecorded work, with no copies located in WorldCat or Jisc. Sayer and Bennett listed the two parts among the ‘new and curious Drawing Books, six leaves in each, … sold at Six pence each’ in their Enlarged Catalogue of new and valuable Prints … Drawing and Copy books (1775), as items 115 and 116. A New Book of Flowers comprises 12 numbered engraved leaves, including 10 fine plates of flowers.

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