Mary Gartside

Mary Gartside
File:Gartsideyellowblot1808.JPG Yellow blot by Mary Gartside, from Essay on a New Theory of Colours, London, 1808
Born	before 1765 Manchester and London, England
Died	after 1808
Nationality	English
Field	Painting
Movement	Neoclassicism and Romanticism

Mary Gartside (active 1781–1809) was an English water colourist and colour theorist. She published three books between 1805 and 1808. In chronological and intellectual terms Mary Gartside can be regarded an exemplary link between Moses Harris, who published his short but important Natural System of Colours around 1766, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s highly influential theory Zur Farbenlehre, first published in Germany in its complete form in 1810.^[1] Gartside’s colour theory was published privately under the disguise of a traditional water colouring manual. Until well into the twentieth century, she remained the only woman known to have published a theory of colour. She exhibited some of her own art work, paintings of flowers in watercolour, at the Royal Academy in 1781 and at the Associated Artists in Water-Color in London in 1808.

Her work has recently been discussed by scholars such as Ian C. Bristow, Ann Bermingham, Martin Kemp, Jean-Jacques Rosat and Raphael Rosenberg. In 2009, Alexandra Loske presented a paper on Gartside's life and work at a research conference in Lewes.

Works

• 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)

References

1. ^ “Mary Gartside - A female colour theorist in Georgian England” in St Andrews Journal of Art History and Museum Studies 2010 Volume 14 pp. 17-30

Persondata
Name	Gartside, Mary
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1781
Place of birth	Manchester and London, England
Date of death	1809
Place of death