'Ferdinand Bauer is seen by many as the greatest natural history painter of all time. Hand-picked by Joseph Banks, in 1801–05 Bauer accompanied Matthew Flinders during his circumnavigation of Australia, and lived in New South Wales and on Norfolk Island. Unusually for the time, Bauer recorded animals and plants in the wild, not captured or dead specimens. And, as he wasn’t able to carry all the colours he needed, he came up with a clever technique of covering his sketches with numbers. Painting by Numbers is a fascinating new study of Bauer’s work and includes reproductions of neverbefore-published works from collections in Europe and Australia.' (Publication Summary)
