The American Cowslip, Plate 26 (1801): Art, History and Details

The American Cowslip, Plate 26 (1801) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Warner (English, active 1790–1828); Peter Charles Henderson (British, 1771–1829); Robert John Thornton (British, 1768–1837).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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

Object facts

• Title: The American Cowslip, Plate 26
• Date: 1801
• Creator attribution: Thomas Warner (English, active 1790–1828); Peter Charles Henderson (British, 1771–1829); Robert John Thornton (British, 1768–1837)
• Culture: England, late 18th-early 19th Century
• Type: Print
• Technique: Etching with printed and hand-applied color, aquatint, stipple, and engraving
• Dimensions: 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.)
• Collection: PR - Aquatint
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1952.213

A detail from the museum

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

Collection credit

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

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.