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

Lot of 16 plates;
Type: Etching;
Support: Heavy paper;
Condition: Excellent black-and-white engraving impression with contemporary coloring, good preserved condition with slight traces of foxing and browning;
Insured shipping via Bartolini/DPD courier. To use the insurance coverage, any damage to the spine/neck must be contested and reported to the courier at the time of delivery. Otherwise, the insurance reimbursement procedure cannot be activated.

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 engaged in botany, mineralogy, geology, paleontology, malacology and mycology, painting hundreds of descriptive plates as part of his scientific passion.

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

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

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.

From a young age he took an interest in flora and the natural sciences; he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he was among the pupils of John Walker.

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

From 1786 he joined the Grand Tour travelers, visiting botanical gardens, museums, and herbaria in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Switzerland. Returning to London in 1788, he founded the Linnean Society there, which he led until his death. His library and botanical collection gained considerable fame, attracting numerous entomologists and botanists from across Europe.

Between 1808 and 1819 he wrote more than 3,000 botany 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 English Flora published between 1824 and 1828.

Among his entomological writings, the noteworthy work was Storia Naturale degli insetti rari di Georgia (Natural History of the Rare Insects of Georgia) published in 1797, in which he focused particularly on the rare species of Lepidoptera found in the American state. Many of his unpublished memoirs were published posthumously in 1832, edited by his wife.