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Summary
Author: Du Fresnoy, Charles Alphonse ; Mason, William
Title: The art of painting of Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy. Translated into English verse by William Mason, M.A. With annotations by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knt, President of the Royal Academy (bound with) Caractacus, a dramatic poem : written on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy. By the author of Elfrida.
Publication: York, printed by A. Ward 1773 ; London, printed for J. Knapton and R. & J. Dodsley 1759.
Price: £590
Reference: 05476
Full Description
4to. (17) (ex xix, no half title leaf) + (3) + 213 + (3)pp ; vii + (1) + 95 + (1)pp. Contemporary full diced calf, rebacked using original spine.
Du Fresnoy’s poem on the art of painting, originally written by its author when a young artist in Rome in the middle of the seventeenth century, caught the imagination of several generations of poets and artists in France, Italy and Britain. The present translation into English verse, done by William Mason, the friend of the poet Gray and of Horace Walpole, superseded an earlier prose translation by Dryden, and carried particular authority from the fact that Mason replaced notes by the French painter Roger Du Piles which had accompanied previous editions with a new series of notes supplied by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the present volume it is bound together with a copy of the first edition of Mason’s verse drama Caractacus; the action of the drama takes place in a Druid temple on the island of Anglesey, with an appropriately melodramatic plot, but there are effective passages of verse, in part because Mason’s text was seen and revised by Gray prior to publication.