This website is accompanied by a book of the same title, Painting by Numbers: The Life and Art of Ferdinand Bauer, written by David J Mabberley AM and published by NewSouth Publishing. The book is about Bauer’s achievements through a colour-recording system that evolved through his career.
Along with an account of Bauer’s life, painting and many adventures in the Mediterranean and on Matthew Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia, the book explores the relationship between the original colour-coded sketches – largely held at the Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Austria, and the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford – and the ‘finished’ watercolours, now mostly in Oxford and the Natural History Museum London.
Many examples of these artworks are included in the book, as well as materials held in the State Library of NSW, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK, and the Linnean Society of London. Care has been taken to include images that have never been published and illustrate Bauer’s work from his teenage years until just before he died.
You can purchase the book here through NewSouth Books