Beale, S. Sophia.

The Amateur’s Guide to Architecture. With Numerous Illustrations.

Edinburgh, John Grant, 1905. 12.5 cm x 18.5 cm. Frontispiece with guard, X, 180 pages. Numerous engraved illustrations throughout text. Prize-Binding in beautifully bound Hardcover (full navy morocco) with gilt lettering on red title-label on spine with raised bands and gilt-tooled decoration to compartments. Gilt amorial stamp of Wimborne Grammar School (now Queen Elizabeth’s School) embossed on front board. Ornate gillt ruling board edges. Marvelously marbled pastedowns, endpapers and edges. Very good condition with only minor signs of external wear. With protecive mylar. Few very small abrasions to leather at spine only. Crack to gutter between front endapers. Binding still good and firm. Some very minor foxing to otherwise clean and bright interior. Dated (July 1909) inscription from A.D.H Allan, Headmaster, and discreet stamps on front endpapers

Includes, for example, the following: Introductory – General Outlines / Trabeated or Beam Architecture / I. Egypt – II. Chaldaea, Assyria, and Persia – III. India – IV. China – V. Japan – VI. Asia Minor – VII. Greece – VIII. Sicily / Round-Arched Architecture – I. Etruria and Rome – II. Early Christian Churches – III. Byzantine Churches – IV. Romanesque Churches – V. Norman – VI. Saracenic / Pointed or Gothic Architecture / Renaissance Architecture / Architectural Examples which May be Studies in London etc.

Sarah Sophia Beale (5 November 1837-1920) was a British portrait painter and author who wrote about art and architecture
Beale was born in central London. Her sister, Ellen Brooker Beale, was also an artist and the two sisters would often work together. Both Sophia and Ellen Beale attended Queen’s College, London and took lessons at a private art school run by the artist Matthew Leigh. They spent considerable periods in the National Gallery and the British Museum copying Old Masters and antiquities. From 1860 to 1867 the two sisters had a studio in Covent Garden on Long Acre. In 1869, and again in 1872, Sophia Beale travelled to Paris where she studied at Charles Joshua Chaplin’s studio and also worked as a supervisor at another studio. When she returned to London, Beale used the money she had earned to open a art school on Albany Street near Regents Park. The techniques she had learnt in Paris were in considerable demand at the time.
In 1889 she was among the 2,000 signatories to a declaration supporting women’s suffrage and she also advocated for the Royal Academy and the universities to allow greater access to women. Although during her career the major exhibition space open to Beale was the Sussex Street gallery of the Society of British Artists where she showed some thirty works, she also had eight works accepted by the Royal Academy between 1863 and 1887. Between 1868 and 1882 she exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy and with the Society of Women Artists from 1860 to 1881. In 1908 Beale published her autobiography, Recollections of a Spinster Aunt. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: 19th Century · Architecture · Architecture – Rare · Bindings · Bookart · Bookdesign · Books on Books Rare · Catalogue Twentyfive – Architecture · Europe · Gothic · History of Architecture · International History · Prize Binding · Prize Bindings · Romanesque · Woman Artist · Women Authors
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 120337AB

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