Mary Gartside

Who was Mary Gartside?

Mary Gartside was an English water colourist and colour theorist. She published three books between 1805 and 1808. In chronological and intellectual terms Mary Gartside can be regarded an exemplary link between Moses Harris, who published his short but important Natural System of Colours around 1766, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s highly influential theory Zur Farbenlehre, first published in Germany in its complete form in 1810. Gartside’s colour theory was published privately under the disguise of a traditional water colouring manual. Until well into the twentieth century, she remained the only woman known to have published a theory of colour. She exhibited some of her own art work, paintings of flowers in watercolour, at the Royal Academy in 1781 and at the Associated Artists in Water-Color in London in 1808.

Her work has recently been discussed by scholars such as Ian C. Bristow, Ann Bermingham, Martin Kemp, Jean-Jacques Rosat and Raphael Rosenberg. In 2009, Alexandra Loske presented a paper on Gartside's life and work at a research conference in Lewes, United Kingdom.