CLARK, John [Heaviside]. The Amateur's Assistant; or, a series of instructions in Sketching from Nature, the Application of Perspective, Tinting of Sketches, Drawing in Water-Colours, Transparent Painting, &c &c. To accompany the subjects which form the portable Diorama. 4to. Printed for Samuel Leigh, 18, Strand, 1826. vi, [2], 66pp + advertisement leaf., 10 plates, of which 6 are line engravings (1 tinted) and 4 are aquatints (3 tinted, 1 coloured). A very good copy in the original salmon pink glazed boards with the very ornate engraved paper label on upper cover. Some occasional foxing, mainly to the end-papers and inner board. Upper two inches of the backstrip is worn. Very scarce. Abbey, Life 111 watermarked 1817, 1824, 1827. Inscribed on the front-end-paper “Fanny Maria Bawdrey from her dear Papa, January, 1842.” A Regency manual for the amateur artist, with step by step instructions illustrated by a series of ten plates; the frontispiece is a hand-colored aquatint, and three of the nine other plates are tinted aquatints. The "portable diorama" mentioned on the title-page was a device invented by Daguerre and Boulton for producing by optical illusion the effects of nature when looking at architectural or landscape drawings. There are examples in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Yale Center for British Art.