The Superb Lily, from The Temple of Flora
1799
Medium
Color mezzotint, aquatint and etching, inked à la poupée, heightened with hand-colored watercolor on cream wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 44.5 × 35.5 cm (17 9/16 × 14 in.); Sheet: 53.4 × 42.6 cm (21 1/16 × 16 13/16 in.); Plate: 48 × 35.8 cm (18 15/16 × 14 1/8 in.)
Classification
mezzotint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
22459
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In 1810, Richard John Thornton published the following “Apology” to his subscribers, explaining why his project of botanical illustrations remained incomplete: It was my original idea, had the times been propitious, to have greatly enlarged this part of the work, and presented the world with seventy PICTURESQUE BOTANICAL COLOURED PLATES, in which case another distribution of them would have been made, and every class illustrated by SELECT EXAMPLES of the most interesting flowers, accurately des...
About the Artist
Richard Earlom · 1728–1794
Richard Earlom (1743–1822) stands as one of the supreme masters of mezzotint engraving in British art history, whose technical virtuosity and dedication to reproductive printmaking brought the works of Old Masters to unprecedented audiences. Born in London on May 14, 1743, Earlom spent his entire career transforming paintings and drawings into prints of extraordinary quality, elevating reproductiv...