Temple of Flora. or Garden of the Botanist, Poet, Painter, and Philosopher by THORNTON, Robert John - 1812

The Most Spectacular Botanical Print Book of Its Era THORNTON, Robert John. Temple of Flora. or Garden of the Botanist, Poet, Painter, and Philosopher. London: Published by Dr. Thornton, 1812. First quarto edition. Large quarto (15 1/8 x 12 1/16 inches; 385x 306 mm.). [45] leaves. B2-E2, E*2, F2-Z2. Complete with engraved title on two leaves, hand-colored allegorical aquatint frontispiece, two uncolored engraved plates (the first by Maddocks after Russel and Opie, the second by Bartolozzi and Landseer after Reinagle), and twenty-eight stipple-engraved, mezzotint, or aquatint color botanical plates by Wm. Dunkarton, R. Rosse, Gaugain, Staeler, Quilley, Maddox, Roffe, D. Maddan, Stadler, after Pether, R.J. Thornton, S. Edwards, Reinagle, Henderson, some hand-colored, some partially printed in colors and finished by hand (including ìThe Persian Cyclamen,î not found in some copies). A few plates with tissue guards. Text watermarked 1810 and 1811; plates watermarked 1811. Contemporary red straight-grain morocco. Almost invisibly rebacked preserving original spine. Boards tooled in blind and stamped in gilt. Spine elaborately stamped and lettered in gilt. Gilt dentelles, gilt board edges. All edges gilt. Blue drab endpapers. Inner hinges repaired. Some light wear and scuffing to boards. Internally very clean. Plates exceptionally bright. Overall a very good copy of this beautiful book. The high point of Romantic era botanical books and the first floral prints with landscape backgrounds. ìIn 1798 there appeared the first of a series of some thirty large colour plates which are unique in that they produce the first flower prints with landscape backgrounds, depicting the natural habitat of the plant. The life size flowers stand forth dramatically and the whole effect is startlingly modern. This large folio, entitled The Temple of Flora or New Illustrations of the Sexual System of Linnaeus, was published by Dr. Robert John Thornton a lecturer on medical botany at Guyís Hospital in London. His announced intention was to make this work the most magnificent tribute ever paid to the famous Swedish botanist by illustrating his Sexual System with the finest possible prints. It was a work on which no expense was spared. Such important artists were employed to produce the designs as Reinagle, Pether, Henderson and Sydenham Edwards. The best of the contemporary engravers, numbering among the mezzotinters the well known Ward, Earlom and Dunkarton, and among the aquatint engravers, Stadler and Sutherland, were engaged to prepare the plates...Out of a contemplated seventy plates only some thirty were published...By appealing to Parliament [Thornton] was authorized to hold a lottery in 1811, and to issue twenty thousand tickets at two guineas each: the value of the prizes amounting to seventy seven thousand pounds. The first prize...consisted of the original paintings for The Temple of Flora. The second prizes were complete sets of the colour prints. The third, some of Thorntonís botanical writings, among them A Philosophy of Botany, and the fourth, a special quarto edition of The Temple of Flora. In this quarto edition the same subjects were re-engraved on a smaller scale with no major change in the composition except in the case of the íNight Blowing Cereus.í In the original or folio edition, there is but a single bloom, set against a moonlight landscape...The composition of the quarto or smaller plate differs in having two full blooms and one bud and no romantic moonlight backgroundî (Dunthorne, pp. 37-39). Dunthorne 302. Great Flower Books, p. 77. Plesch, p. 433. Nissen BBI 1955. Stafleu and Cowan 14, 283. HBS 67956. $20,000