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1893 text

Alexander Browne, a printseller, who taught drawing, and practised it with success. He published in 1669, “Ars Pictoria, or an Academy treating of Drawing, Painting, Limning and Etching.”

This text was written as a footnote in the 1893 Wheatley transcription of the diary, the same one that is used for the diary entries on this site.

Annotations

  • Sir Thomas Browne Encyclopedia of World Biography … Sir Thomas Browne The works of the English author Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) are in large part inquiries into religion, morality, science, and human error. A doctor and scholar, he is chiefly famed for Religio medici, which is marked by his masterly prose style. Thomas Browne was born in …

    Sir Thomas Browne
    Religio Medici
    PART THE SECOND

    http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/browne/thomas/religio/part2.html

  • erase the above wrong Browne

    Alexander Browne, Practitioner of the Art of Limning
    Alexander Browne (floruit 1659-1706) moved between several interconnected professions and was a notable figure in the art world of late seventeenth century London. He was variously a ‘practitioner of the art of limning’ (although none of his paintings or miniatures survives or can be identified); a drawing master (to Mrs Pepys among others); a colourman; the author of drawing manuals (the first in 1660) and of a treatise on art (Ars Pictoria, 1669); an art auctioneer (conducting sales later at his own premises in Gerrard Street, Soho), and a print publisher and printseller. His shop at ‘ye Blew Balcony’ in Little Queen Street near Lincolns Inn Fields would have contained quantities of prints, books and artists’ materials.

    Browne died in 1706 and as was usual his widow quickly sold his collections at auction. The sale was advertised:

    What is a mezzotint?
    A mezzotint (in the Italian sense ‘half-tone’; French manière noire; German schabkunst) is a print made using a copper plate which has been worked over (‘grounded’) using a semi-circular fine-toothed tool (‘rocker’) so that the entire surface is roughened. In this state, when inked the plate will print solid black. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/mellon.asp
    view;
    http://www.npg.org.uk/live/mellon.asp#anchor97064

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References in the diary

1665
May: 7