Description:
A guide to nature's colour palette, Werner's Nomenclature of Colours pairs 110 colour swatches with poetic descriptions of the plants, animals, and minerals each shade was drawn from.
Brief description:
SYME, PATRICK (1774-1845), flower-painter, was born in Edinburgh on 17 Sept. 1774, and there educated. He occasionally practised portraiture, but is best known as a flower-painter, and in the early Scottish exhibitions, which began in 1808, his flower-pieces were much admired.
In 1803 he took up his brother's practice as a drawing-master, and subsequently his time was largely devoted to teaching. In 1810 Syme published 'Practical Directions for Learning Flower Drawing, ' and in 1814 a translation of Werner's 'Nomenclature of Colours.'
He was one of the associated artist members of the Royal Institution, but took a leading part in the foundation of the Scottish Academy, occupying the chair at the first meeting in May 1826, and was one of the council of four then appointed to manage its affairs.
Towards the close of his life he was art master at Dollar academy. Syme was a student of botany and entomology, and made many excellent drawings of natural history.
In 1823 he issued a 'Treatise on British Song Birds.' He married a daughter of Lord Balmuto, the Scots judge, and died at Dollar, Clackmannanshire, in July 1845.
--A Biography from Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 55
Review Quotes:
"A treatise which ought to be in the hands of every mineralogist, and indeed in the possession of naturalists of every description."-Inverness Courier, 1822