Mary Gartside facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mary Gartside
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| Born | c. 1755 |
| Died | 1819 |
| Nationality | English |
| Known for | Painting Botany Colour theory |
| Movement | Neoclassicism and Romanticism |
Mary Gartside (born around 1755, died 1819) was an English artist who specialized in watercolour painting. She was also a "colour theorist," which means she studied and wrote about how colours work and how artists can use them.
Mary Gartside published three books between 1805 and 1808. She is important because her ideas about colour connect the work of earlier thinkers like Moses Harris (who wrote about colours in 1766) and later famous figures like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (whose big book on colour came out in 1810). Mary Gartside's colour ideas were shared in books that looked like regular painting guides. She is the first woman known to have published her own theory about colour.
About Mary Gartside
Mary Gartside was born around 1755. She was an artist who loved to paint with watercolours. She showed her beautiful flower paintings at important art shows. For example, her work was displayed at the Royal Academy in 1781. She also showed her art at the Botanic Gardens in Liverpool in 1784. Later, in 1808, her paintings were part of an exhibition by the Associated Artists in Water-Color in London. Mary Gartside passed away on December 9, 1819, when she was 64 years old. She died near a town called Ludlow.
Her Books on Colour and Art
Between 1805 and 1808, Mary Gartside wrote and published three books. These books were about painting with watercolours. They also shared her special ideas about how colours work. She wanted to show artists how to use colour theory in their own paintings.
Her first book was called An Essay on Light and Shade. It was published in 1805. This book was printed just for her, not by a big publisher. In 1808, she released a second, bigger version of this book. It had a new title: An Essay on a New Theory of Colour. This book was meant to be the first of three volumes, but the other two were never published.
Another book she wrote in 1808 was Ornamental Groups, Descriptive of Flowers, Birds, Shells, Fruit, Insects etc.. This book was published by William Miller. Before her main books, she also wrote a short, 10-page pamphlet. It was called An Essay on Light and Shadow. This early pamphlet did not have the special hand-coloured "blots" that were included in her later books. These blots were probably examples of her colour theories. Mary Gartside also created two drawings that were used in a book about natural history by Dru Drury.
Key Works by Mary Gartside
- An Essay on Light and Shade, on Colours, and on Composition in General (London, 1805)
- An Essay on a New Theory of Colours, and on Composition in General (London, 1808)
- Ornamental Groups, Descriptive of Flowers, Birds, Shells, Fruit, Insects, &c., and Illustrative of a New Theory of Colouring (London, W. Miller, 1808)
