Theorie du beau pittoresque, demontree dans ses applications a la composition, au clair obscur, a la couleur et a l'interpretation de la nature par l'art, ou Essai d'un expose des principes fondamentaux de la peinture
This French treatise by Jean Baptiste Laurens, published in Montpellier and Paris in 1849, sets out principles of picturesque beauty for painters on composition, chiaroscuro, colour and the art of rendering nature. Its plates are printed landscape studies, with trees, paths, rocky outcrops, water and small figures drawn in fine grey line and tone, shown rotated on the page. A designer could take from them the layered foreground-to-distance structure of picturesque views, with framing trees and winding roads leading the eye into space.
