The Restoration of Paintings
KÖSTER, Christian.
Zerstreute Gedanken-Blätter über Kunst. Eine Zugabe zu den Heftchen über Restauration alter Oelgemälde … [– Zweites Heft]. Heidelberg, Christian Friedrich Winter, 1833 [– 1834].
Two parts (of six), 16mo, pp. I: iv, 60, II: 84; scattered spotting; bound in publisher’s printed purple wrappers; slightly worn and frayed at extremities, partial cracks to spines, but good copies.
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Zerstreute Gedanken-Blätter über Kunst. Eine Zugabe zu den Heftchen über Restauration alter Oelgemälde … [– Zweites Heft].
First editions, very rare, of Köster’s first two addenda to his early and influential work on the restoration of paintings.
Ueber Restauration alter Oelgemälde, published by the restorer Christian Köster (1784–1851) in three volumes between 1827 and 1830, was ‘one of the first books in German on the restoration of paintings’ and ‘distinguished itself from contemporary writings by proposing an ethical basis for the profession of restorers’ (Stehr, pp. 83–84, trans.). He continued to add ‘scattered thoughts’ over the following two decades, publishing six Zerstreute Gedanken-Blätter between 1833 and 1847.
OCLC finds only a single mixed set in the UK, at the National Gallery, with the Berlin edition of part II, and a single copy of part V only in the US, at Harvard.
Ute Stehr, ‘Christian Koesters Schrift “Ueber Restauration alter Oelgemälde” und die Praxis des Restaurators Johann Jakob Schlesinger: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gemälderestaurierung in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’ in Beiträge zur Erhaltung von Kunst- und Kulturgut 2 (2012), pp. 83–95.