The American Cowslip, Plate 26

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

1801

Robert John Thornton

(British, 1768–1837)

Culture

England, late 18th-early 19th Century

Medium

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

Measurements

Image: 44.7 x 35.7 cm (17 5/8 x 14 1/16 in.); Sheet: 55.3 x 46 cm (21 3/4 x 18 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland in memory of Mrs. Ralph King 1952.213

Catalogue raisonné

Dunthorne 301, p. 250; Nissen 1955

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Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

Each plant in The Temple of Flora was paired with a scientific description of its reproductive system and a poem.

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