First edition, this copy inscribed by the author: “To Robbie with the most / cordial of good wishes / Barbara Whelpton / Rye 1971”. A bright, clean copy, seldom found signed.

Barbara Fanny Crocker (1910–1995), later Barbara Crocker Whelpton, was a British writer and painter best known for her murals. In 1927, she attended the Slade School of Fine Art, before completing her education in France and Italy. Later, she taught lectures on art, including to troops during the Second World War, and travelled extensively throughout Europe, Russia and the Middle East, which led to a series of travel books.

Painter’s Provence was one of her later works, and within the same year she also published Painters' Florence, (1971). Both works discuss the region through the eyes of an artist; “the glorious effect of the light and the sculptural qualities of the hills...” as well as the galleries and museums which hold the works of the area’s most important and distinguished painters.

8vo., pale orange publisher’s boards lettered in black to spine; map endpapers showing the Cote D’Azur; illustrative dust wrapper printed in black, brown and white (30s. (£1.50) net); pp. [vi], 7-191, [i];containing numerous illustrations by the writer; a near-fine copy in like dust wrapper, lower panel a little sunned, otherwise clean and bright.