13. James Caldwell (1739 - ?) after
Phillip Reinagle (1749-1833)
The Blue Passion Flower

(click on image to print)
Caldwell, The Blue Passion Flower

The Blue Passion Flower

Aquatint, stipple, engraving and etching printed in color with additional hand coloring, 1800, 510 x 380 mm., Dunthorne p. 248 ii/iii; Grigson/Buchanan 3 iii; from Dr. Thornton's The Temple of Flora. Fine impression, the colors fresh, on wove paper with good margins; pale discoloration, minor creases and a few edge nicks, all in the margins. Thornton’s collection, the prints individually commissioned from the best designers and best engravers of the day, is one of the great masterpieces of botanical illustration, the images life size (and sometimes a bit more), the compositions striking. To modern eyes, there is something supernatural about many of them, particularly in the subjugation of man-made elements to natural ones and the absence of human figures – as if the world had been taken over by plants. This leads only to a greater attraction of the images.