James Edward Smith / James Sowerby - Lot. of 16 sheets - "English Botany; or, Coloured Figures of British Plants" - 1800

Set of 16 plates;
Type: Engraving;
Support: Heavy paper;
Condition: Excellent impression in black and white with contemporary coloration, good preservation with slight traces of bloom and browning;
Shipping insured via Bartolini/DPD courier. To use the insurance coverage, any neck damage must be contested and reported to the courier at the time of delivery. Otherwise, it will not be possible to activate the insurance refund procedure.

Publisher: J. DAVIS,
And sold by the Owner J. SOWERBY

James Sowerby (London, 21 March 1757 – Lambeth, 25 October 1822) was an English illustrator and naturalist.

Illustration of Acer campestre by J. Sowerby
He devoted himself, pursuing his passion for the natural sciences, to botany, mineralogy, geology, paleontology, malacology and mycology, painting hundreds of descriptive plates.

He studied art at the Royal Academy of London and worked with William Curtis, whose botanical work, Flora Londinensis, he supervised illustrations for.

Works
Sir James Edward Smith & James Sowerby (1790-1814). English Botany, 36 volumes.
James Sowerby (1796-1815). Coloured figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms, 3 volumes.

Sir James Edward Smith (Norwich, 2 December 1759 – 17 March 1828) was an English entomologist and botanist, founder and first president of the Linnean Society of London.

Interested in flora and the natural sciences from a very young age, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he was among John Walker’s pupils.

In 1783 he moved to London. Here, the following year, he had the opportunity to save and purchase the entire Swedish natural history collection of Linnaeus, including thousands of plant, insect and mollusk species, as well as documents and books. The publicity of this initiative allowed Smith to gain admission to the Royal Society.

From 1786 he joined the Grand Tour travelers, visiting botanical gardens, museums and herbariums in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Switzerland. Returning to London in 1788, he founded the Linnean Society, which he presided over until his death. His library and botanical collection gained much fame, so much that they were visited by numerous entomologists and botanists from all over Europe.

Between 1808 and 1819 he wrote over 3,000 botanical articles for the “New Cyclopaedia,” Abraham Rees’s universal dictionary of the arts and sciences. Among his best-known publications are Flora Britannica and the four volumes of Flora English published between 1824 and 1828.

Among his entomology writings, particular importance fell to the Natural History of the rare insects of Georgia published in 1797, in which he dealt specifically with the rare species of Lepidoptera present in the American state. Many of his unpublished memoirs were published posthumously in 1832, edited by his wife.