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Case 5: Popular Botany in the Nineteenth Century
Exhibition curator: Hugh Cahill
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Arrangement of wildflowers, from: Anne Pratt. The flowering plants, grasses, sedges, and ferns of Great Britain and their allies the club mosses, pepperworts, and horsetails. London: Frederick Warne and Co., [1873].[ Early Science Collection QK306 PRA] |
Anne Pratt. The flowering plants, grasses, sedges, and ferns of Great Britain and their allies the club mosses, pepperworts, and horsetails. London: Frederick Warne and Co., [1873].
Early Science Collection QK306 PRA
First published in five volumes between 1855-1866, The flowering plants, grasses, sedges, and ferns of Great Britain was widely regarded as the best popular botanical work of its time. Its author and illustrator, Anne Pratt (1806-1893), suffered from ill health as a child and was unable to engage in outdoor pursuits. A family friend, Dr Dods, taught her botany and one of her sisters collected plants for her, which she sketched. The drawings afterwards formed illustrations for her books.
She wrote and illustrated several other botanical works, including The field,
the garden, and the woodland, which was published in 1838 and reached a
third edition in less than ten years, and Wild flowers, published in
1852, and which was also issued in sheets for hanging up in schoolrooms. The
importance of Anne Pratt's books in spreading a knowledge and love of botany
was acknowledged by a grant from the civil list.
Elizabeth Twining. Illustrations of the natural orders of plants with groups and descriptions. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1868.
Early Science Collection QK98 TWI
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Cacti, from: Elizabeth Twining. Illustrations of the natural orders of plants with groups and descriptions. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1868. [Early Science Collection QK98 TWI] |
Elizabeth Twining (1805-1889), philanthropist, painter and writer, was a member of the famous Twining tea dynasty. Elizabeth began painting flowers in childhood, drawing inspiration from Curtis's Botanical Magazine and from her many visits to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Chiswick and practising by making many sketches from works in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. The first volume of Illustrations of the natural orders of plants appeared in 1849, with the second volume being published in 1855. This was a sumptuous folio edition with 160 hand-coloured lithographs.
Elizabeth Twining also had many philanthropic interests; she set up and managed a temperance hall in Portugal Street, renovated the local almshouses near her home in Twickenham and established the hospital of St John's for the treatment of the poor. She had long been associated with King's College Hospital and the honorary consulting physician and surgeon of St John's had both been trained at King's.
This volume was presented by Elizabeth's sister, Louisa Twining, to the Ladies'
Department of King's College London.
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Snowdrop and Snowflake, from: Frederick Edward Hulme. Familiar wild flowers. London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin & Co., [1878?-1884?]. [Early Science Collection QK85.5 HUL] |
Frederick Edward Hulme. Familiar wild flowers. London: Cassell, Petter, & Galpin & Co., [1878?-1884?].
Early Science Collection QK85.5 HUL
Frederick Edward Hulme (1841-1909), naturalist, artist and one-time Professor of Freehand and Geometrical Drawing at King's, is perhaps best remembered today for the beautifully illustrated Familiar wild flowers, a fine example of a popular botanical work from the Victorian period. Almost a century after the death of its author it is still popular with book lovers. Every plant discussed in this work is illustrated with a fine coloured plate, which is accompanied with a detailed description of the plant, its habitat and geographical range, medicinal uses, common names and associated folklore. Hulme began work on Familiar wild flowers while he was drawing master at Marlborough College, a position he held from 1870 to 1883. It was first published serially and Hulme had just completed a ninth volume shortly before his death in 1909. The whole series was re-issued posthumously.
Familiar wild flowers combined two of Hulme's passions, art and natural history. Artistic talent seems to have run in his family; his grandmother was a painter on porcelain and his father was the landscape painter Frederick William Hulme (1816-1884). Hulme was a keen amateur botanist and natural historian and was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1869. He published his first botanical work, A series of sketches from nature of plant-form, the first of many finely illustrated works on natural history topics, in 1868. Other notable works by Hulme include Wild fruits of the country-side (1902), Butterflies and moths of the countryside (1903), and Familiar Swiss flowers (1908). Hulme's skills were such that he was in demand to illustrate the work of other authors. He provided the illustrations to Shirley Hibberd's very popular Familiar garden flowers (1879-1887) and F. G. Heath's Sylvan spring (1880).
William Rhind. A history of the vegetable kingdom : embracing comprehensive descriptions of the plants most interesting from their uses to man and the lower animals ... London: Blackie and Son, 1874.
Early Science Collection QK15 RHI
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Selection of plants used for their fibres, from: William Rhind. A history of the vegetable kingdom : embracing comprehensive descriptions of the plants most interesting from their uses to man and the lower animals ... London: Blackie and Son, 1874. [Early Science Collection QK15 RHI] |
William Rhind (1797-1874), physician and naturalist, was the author of numerous books on natural history and related subjects but A history of the vegetable kingdom is the work for which he is best remembered today.
Many of the illustrations for A history of the vegetable kingdom were provided by Walter Hood Fitch (1817-1892), one of the most important botanical artists of the nineteenth century. Fitch began his art training in 1828 with Andrew Donaldson (1790-1846), the Scottish painter. In 1829-1830 he took a course in the techniques of lithography before becoming an apprentice pattern-drawer in the textile industry.
Fitch was introduced to botany by William Jackson Hooker (1785-1865), editor
of Curtis's Botanical Magazine and Professor of Botany at Glasgow University.
Hooker, impressed with Fitch's artistic skills, bought him out of his apprenticeship
and put him to work on Curtis's Botanical Magazine. Fitch's first published
plate appeared in volume 61 in March 1834 - the first of nearly 3,000 for that
journal. When Hooker became director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1841,
Fitch went with him and he was to illustrate nearly every book issued from Kew
over the next forty years. Fitch's great artistic skill and scientific accuracy
ensured that he was in demand to illustrate a wide range of botanical works
from scientific monographs to textbooks and from floras to works of popular
science, such as the one displayed here. His output was prodigious; he produced
over 9,000 drawings for various publications apart from those for Curtis's
Botanical Magazine. His name is commemorated in the genus Fitchia.
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