Ferdinand Bauer is seen by many as the
greatest natural history painter of all time. Hand-picked by Joseph Banks, in 1801-1805 Bauer accompanied Matthew
Flinders during his circumnavigation of Australia, and lived in New South Wales
and Norfolk Island. Already celebrated in Europe for the precision and beauty
of his paintings, it was during this commission that Bauer perfected the technique
of sketching and colour-coding in the field, and then colouring later — painting by numbers.
This fascinating new study of Bauer’s work
includes reproductions of never-before-published works from collections in
Europe and Australia. Written by one
of the world’s foremost botanical scholars, Painting
by Numbers reveals Bauer’s innovative colour-coding technique for the first
time.
