Large Flowering Sensitive Plant, Plate 16

The Temple of Flora; or Garden of Nature. Picturesque Botanical Plates of the New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus

Large Flowering Sensitive Plant, Plate 16

1799

Robert John Thornton

(British, 1768–1837)

England, late 18th-early 19th Century

Etching with printed and hand-applied color, aquatint, stipple, and engraving

Image: 44.2 x 35.8 cm (17 3/8 x 14 1/8 in.); Plate: 47.5 x 36 cm (18 11/16 x 14 3/16 in.); Sheet: 53.5 x 43.9 cm (21 1/16 x 17 5/16 in.)

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in honor of Mrs. William G. Mather 1955.479

Catalogue raisonné: Dunthorne 301, p. 248; Nissen 1955

Location: 101B Prints & Drawings

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Did You Know?

In The Temple of Flora, this print was accompanied by a scientific description and a poem written by Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather).

Description

Fueled by scientific and colonial expeditions that brought back plant specimens from across the globe, the science of botany blossomed in Enlightenment Europe. This print is from a sumptuously illustrated treatise known as The Temple of Flora. Commissioned and published by Dr. Robert John Thornton, a British medical botanist, the work illustrates the new plant classification system of Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus. Yet while these prints realistically depict buds, flowers, and leaves, they show them in environments where they did not actually grow. Instead, Thornton had the artists situate specimens in imagined landscapes, often reminiscent of British colonial holdings, which he felt better suited the plants.