“Tint and Form”: The Geometric Philosophy Underlying Oliver Byrne’s Elements

Oliver Byrne published his groundbreaking and visually remarkable edition of Euclid’s Elements in 1847. The book is extraordinary, featuring four-color diagrams, illustrations, grids, and decorative engraving. Its aesthetic similarity to various stylistic themes of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements has been noted, but little attention has been paid to the pedagogical and theoretical insights that shaped Byrne’s illustrative choices. In this article, the author explains some key philosophical ideas underlying Byrne’s geometric illustrations and contextualizes them amid Byrne’s wider mathematical preoccupations.