Traité des ombres. Théorie des teintes, des points brillants et de la perspective cavalière. Troisième édition. [Plates volume:] Cours de mathématiques à l'usage des architectes, ingénieurs civils, etc. Applications de géométrie descriptive. Ombres. Quatrième édition.Paris, Armand Colin, etc.; Berlin; Madrid (plates volume: Paris, Armand Colin), 1870-1874. Text volume and atlas volume. 8vo (text) and folio (atlas). Atlas volume with letterpress title-page and numerous illustrations on 42 numbered engraved plates after the author, including 2 folding double-page plates (one of these numbered 12 bis) and 10 double-page plates. Contemporary uniform red half shagreen, gold-stamped spine, marbled boards.

Text volume: X, [1], [1 blank], 388 pp.Rare treatise specially devoted to the perspective of shadows, first published in 1838 (plates) and 1840 (text). A second edition appeared in 1852. Only the plates-volume indicates it is part of the series Cours de mathématiques. In the preface to this posthumous edition (the preface apparently used for an unknown earlier edition, at page 386 our text is dated in letterpress: “Mai 1854”), the author Joseph Alphonse Adhémar (1797-1862) indicates the difference between the first and the present edition: (1) by demonstrating many principles that appeared not to have been properly developed yet and (2) by adding quite a number of plates meant to improve the students' abilities in graphic exercises."A good example of an author who attempts to embrace the mathematical, pictorial and technically illustrative aspects of perspective in this period is Joseph-Alphonse Adhémar, one of the Mongean theorists [following Gaspard Monge's Geométrie descriptive, 1798]. Adhémar was a prolific author on applied geometry, and his various treatises were gathered together in a set of volumes under the title Cours de mathématiques à l'usage des architectes, ingénieurs civils etc. These included accounts of descriptive geometry, linear perspective, the theory of shadows and the applications of the Mongean techniques to engineering drawing." (Kemp).The text volume is divided into 7 main chapters, incorporating problems involved in drawing shadows of all possible forms in a series of 583 paragraphs. After general definitions of shadows, the author deals with polyhedrons, broken shadows, cylinders, cones, spheres, niches, vases, capitals, ellipsoids, other surfaces, aerial perspective, exercises etc., with the number of the plate illustrating the subject listed at the top of each text page. The fine plates follow the exact order of the text.Two preliminary blank (?) leaves of the text volume torn out; both volumes occasionally slightly foxed, otherwise good copies.