Modern Chromatics, With Applications to Art and Industry

1879. ROOD, Ogden N. Modern Chromatics, With Applications to Art and Industry. 329 pp. Illustrated throughout text with black and white plates as well as a colour frontispiece. 8vo, 187 x 125 mm., bound in publisher's red decorated cloth. London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1879. First edition of this important work on colour theory. Rood taught physics at Columbia and was an amateur painter who sought "to present in a simple and comprehensive manner the underlying facts upon which the artistic use of color necessarily depends." The book was translated into French in 1881, and was adopted by Seurat and the Neo-Impressionists. The book is discussed in William Homer's Seurat and the art of painting. According to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, the book was known as "the impressionist's bible."