Beschreibung:

THORNTON, Robert John (1768-1837). The Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature . London: 1810-1812.
THORNTON, Robert John (1768-1837). The Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature . London: 1810-1812.] Atlas 2° (575 x 455mm). 31 colour-printed aquatint and mezzotint plates finished by hand, watermarked 1806-1810. (The plates only, without titles and text.) Contemporary olive morocco tooled in blind and gilt (binding expertly restored, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance : William Constable Maxwell (of Everingham Park, Yorkshire, armorial bookplate) -- Duchess of Norfolk (later pencilled manuscript note on front free endpaper). ‘THE MOST SUMPTUOUS FLORILEGIUM OF ALL TIMES’ ( Great Flower Books p.42). The plates are after paintings by Abraham Pether Philip Reinagle Sydenham Edwards, Peter Henderson and others. Although a physician by training, Thornton himself provided the painting for the ‘Roses’, a particularly sumptuous plate. Ward, Earlom and Dunkarton executed the mezzotint engraving, while the aquatinting of the plates was done by Stadler and Sutherland. Although it caused his ruin, Thornton produced ‘ ... the most strikingly beautiful set of flower plates ever to be printed in England, [and] one of the loveliest books in the world’ (see Alan Thomas's account in Great Books and Book Collector s pp.142-4). The high production costs of such a lavish work put Thornton under severe financial pressure, and, in 1811, he hit upon the idea of ‘The Royal Botanic Lottery’ as a means of raising funds. The first prize was to be the original drawings for the work, the second class of prizes consisted of copies of the full work ‘in five folio volumes’ (i.e. including the New Illustration of the sexual system of...Linnaeus ). The third class was 200 portfolios of the coloured plates for The Temple of Flora , and the fourth class was made up of the smaller quarto edition of the work. It therefore seems likely that the present example, bound without text as it is, was one of the third class of prizes comprising a set of the coloured plates. The lottery was not a success, and Thornton's fortunes never recovered, though his work remains one of the greatest of its kind. Dunthorne 301; Great Flower Books p.143; Nissen BBI 1955; Stafleu 14.283.