Treatises on painting between the 1st and the 12th centuries A.D. may have been many but those preserved are found in two manuscripts from the 10th and 12th centuries: the Mappae Clavicula and Eraclius, On the Arts and Colours of the Romans – both of which probably date from c. 8th century. Of the 12th century itself there is On Divers Arts by Theophilus. All the passages on pigments from these three manuscripts are included in this handbook, and they include the earliest known recipes for vermilion (c. 3rd century A.

A French collection of recipes for painting on parchment, On Making Colours, by a painter, Peter of St. Audemar, possibly of the Benedictine Abbey of St Bertin at St. Omer in northern France. St. Omer was an active centre of painters and scribes from the end of the 12th century and from it probably came The Aviary / De avibus by Hugo de Fouilloy (c. 1140) in the so-called Gloucester copy which is dated 1277. Plates and illustrations have been included in this handbook, bringing together a treatise and a book which may have derived from the same place, an exceptional event in the history of pigments. Notable is the reference to painting in oil on panel, artists of the French school responsible for the London, Westminster Abbey Retable of 1280, also painted in oil on panel.

The 19th century was a century of new pigments. They were derived from recently recognised metals –cadmium, chrome, zinc and others – as well as from the discovery of the chemical colouring substances of plants. From indigo the aniline dyes were manufactured, and from madder came the alizarin red pigments – there were hundreds of these coal tar pigments. The English chemist, George Field, published his Chromatography in 1835, a comprehensive collection which included many of the new pigments and, as the century wore on so new pigments were added to up-dated editions of his book in 1869 and 1885. They were published by the English colour-makers, Winsor & Newton, so become a chronicle of a world of new pigments for painters not only in England but also in France and Germany especially. 19th Century Colour Palettes traces these developments, presenting the pigments in dictionary form in extracts taken from the editions of Field's Chromatography.

A collection of all the historical pigments mentioned in the treatises included in the series Colour Palettes, by century, complemented by recipes from other contemporary sources. The entries define the pigment – colour, its source (animal, plant, mineral) and its name – and describe its method of preparation, with historical remarks tracing the pigment through the centuries. Recipes provide the documentary history of the pigment beginning with the earliest known through to 1837, the date of George Field's, Chromatography, to make up a history of each pigment.

15th century Italian painting mastered the art of painting light in the world. As Leon Battista Alberti wrote in On Painting (1435), "light has the power to vary colour", hence a rich palette of pigments and how to mix colours was necessary to capture every nuance. Countless recipes are provided by the anonymous author of "Secrets for Colours" (c. 1450), called the Bolognese Manuscript, intended for use in fresco and in oil on panel, accompanied by instructions on how to make varnishes for paintings.

From Italy to France to Flanders, the arts of painting in the 14th century were practised in manuscript illumination, on panel, and in fresco. Recipes for pigments appropriate to all these arts are included in this collection. "Experiments upon Colours" were dictated by painters to a Frenchman, Jehan Alcherius, while the Italian artist, Cennino Cennini, was especially attentive to the practice and the pigments to be used in fresco painting in The Book of Art / Il Libro dell' Arte, of c. 1390. His descriptions reveal the craft of Giotto, whose works make up the plates in this collection.

A companion volume to 14th Century Colour Palettes -Volume 2, this book covers painting on the wall and onwood panel from Cennino Cennini, The Book of Art, of the late 1390s (extracts). The pigmentsand methods are drawn from the practice of Giotto, as Cennino writes.

From Italy to France to Flanders, the arts of painting in the 14th century were practised in manuscript illumination, on panel, and in fresco. Recipes for pigments appropriate to all these arts are included in this collection. "Experiments upon Colours" were dictated by painters to a Frenchman, Jehan Alcherius, while the Italian artist, Cennino Cennini, was especially attentive to the practice and the pigments to be used in fresco painting in The Book of Art / Il Libro dell' Arte, of c. 1390. His descriptions reveal the craft of Giotto, whose works make up the plates in this collection.

Pigments described by the English chemist, Robert Dossie, the French artists' colourman, Jean Félix Watin, and the London-based pigment maker, Constant de Massoul. 18th century European painting saw the introduction of new pigments to the painters’ palettes, from Prussian Blue to the early synthetics such as Patent Yellow. It was a century rich in pigments, the authors of the treatises listing over 150 pigments that could be bought in the shops in London and Paris.

Three texts by two Italian Renaissance painters – Leonardo da Vinci and Gian Paolo Lomazzo – and a compendium of the 53 standard pigments commonly found on artists' palettes for painting in oil on panel and on canvas as outlined by the writer, Raffaello Borghini, make up this 16th century collection of pigments. Leonardo's studio advice on the use of colours for capturing light and dark picks up this theme from Italian 15th century and classical painting and lays the foundation for this practice as it would develop in European painting. The plates are of works by Titian found in the National Gallery in London, whose pigments have been identified and matched to the paintings.

The sources of pigments used in European painting are found in classical antiquity, 1st. century B.C. to 1st century A.D. The over 40 pigments in use were described by Vitruvius, Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides, complemented by 3rd

The French Impressionist painters discovered new means for painting light – they used a “solar palette”, the pigments matched to the colours the eyes see. They are the colours of a ray of light. This little book reproduces palettes by 8 of the plein-air painters – Cézanne, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, Signac, and Van Gogh. It describes the pigments they used, and includes short excerpts by the scientists whose work was the foundation of the new painting – complementary colours, optical mixing, and the pigment-colour correspondences.

Collection of 30 texts, 1915-1928, & 3 facsimiles, some in first English translation, plus Nina Kogan on Cubism and Ilya Chashnik on Suprematism. Chronological sections trace Malevich’s analyses of Cubism and Futurism, the Supremus Society of Artists, Suprematism Triumphant, UNOVIS, Theory of Creativity as Artistic Culture, and the Non-Objective World of Sensations. A presentation of sensations from Cézanne to Suprematism is followed by a discussion of how consciousness and the environment influence artistic creativity in P. Railing, Malevich on Creativity.

A facsimile edition of Kazimir Malevich, SUPREMATISM 34 Drawings, was published in 1990 by Artists Bookworks accompanied by an introduction to the drawings by Patricia Railing; it is now out-of-print. This 2014 reprint of Malevich’s little book contains a new translation from the Russian and a new introductory text by Patricia Railing, “Reading the 34 Drawings”. The Russian text and plates were scanned from an original copy and the size of this little book conforms to the lithographed Russian edition of 1920.

This is the first study to investigate the sources of the creative processes in the painting of Kazimir Malevich, from Neo-Primitivism to Suprematism, 1911-1920. These sources are found in 19th century scientific investigations into optics, especially those of Hermann von Helmholtz, the artist adapting the laws of optical light and colour and the laws of optical structures of seeing in space and in depth to his painting. Malevich’s creative processes culminated in his non-objective canvases, Suprematism, between 1915 and 1920, the painting of pure seeing.

A collection of 16 essays on the artist’s painting and works for the theatre between 1910 and 1924. The essays explore the colour theories that gave rise to her abstract painting and the basic laws of structure that gave order to her Cubist, Simultaneist, Non-Objective painting and her stage and costume design. Contemporary accounts of her three plays, Famira Kifared, Salome, and Romeo and Juliet are included together with extracts from Alexander Tairov’s, Notes of a Director (1921). The book closes with a detailed and illustrated Chronology of Exter’s exhibitions and paintings.