Nine Letters on Landscape Painting book

Nine Letters on Landscape Painting is the 17th volume in the Getty Research Institute’s Texts & Documents series. The series design is built around the consistent application of rigorous typographic standards such as the use of Sabon and News Gothic fonts, and the covers are distinguished by large typography set against backgrounds of ever-changing color and imagery. In 1831 the German physician, philosopher and sometime artist Carl Gustav Carus published this literary exploration of the aims of landscape painting. The idea for the cover—nine details from nine landscape paintings, reflecting the breadth and scope of the period discussed by Carus—was the idea of the designer, and fortunately nine appropriate paintings were found in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum! They also presented challenges in the color correction, namely, keeping the various browns from blending into one another and maintaining the colors of the sky and bushes, etc., by increasing the color contrast.