The Sacred Egyptian Bean or Water Lily

This dramatic large folio botanical engraving is from Dr. Robert John Thornton’s work New Illustration of the Sexual System of Carolus Von Linnaeus…and the Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature. This was the first edition of the work published in London by between 1787 and 1812. Each engraving was made using stipple, mezzotint, and aquatint processes and some feature hand-coloring heightened with gum Arabic. The engraving will include the text when available to send with the plate.

Thornton’s engravings featured an uncommon composition in which the subject was seen oversized in relation to the background giving the plates a theatrical presence. Temple of Flora is often considered the greatest achievement in British botanical art. Thornton employed some of the foremost artists to create the plates included Peter Charles Henderson, Philip Reinagle, Abraham Pether, and Sydenham Edwards. Richard Earlom, James Caldwall, Thomas Sutherland, and Joseph Constantine Stadler were the engravers for Temple of Flora.

Thornton’s The Temple of Flora is the greatest English colour-plate flower book. “…[Thornton] inherited a competent fortune and trained as a doctor. He appears to have had considerable success in practice and was appointed both physician to the Marylebone Dispensary and lecturer in medical botany at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s hospitals. But quite early in his career he embarked on his…great work. What Redouté produced under the patronage of L’Héritier, Marie Antoinette, the Empress Josephine, Charles X, and the Duchesse de Berry, Thornton set out to do alone…Numerous important artists were engaged…twenty-eight paintings of flowers commissioned from Abraham Pether, known as `Moonlight Pether,’ Philip Reinagle, …Sydenham Edwards, and Peter Henderson…The result…involved Thornton in desperate financial straits…In an attempt to extricate himself he organized the Royal Botanic Lottery, under the patronage of the Prince Regent…It is easy to raise one’s eyebrows at Thornton’s unworldly and injudicious approach to publishing…But he produced…one of the loveliest books in the world.” (Alan Thomas, Great Books and Book Collecting, pp.142-144)