Titled - "The Night-Blowing Cereus
London, Published May 20 1800 by Dr. Thornton
The Flower by Reinagle, Moon-light by Pether."
 
Publisher - Robert John Thornton
First Edition from "Temple of Flora" c1800.
Unframed. 
Paper Size - approximately 17 1/2" x 22 1/4"
Plate Size - approximately 14 1/4" x 19 1/4"
Printed in colour using mezzotint, aquatint, engraving, etching, and stipple engraving processes with original hand-finished colouring enhanced with gum Arabic. 
 
Condition - colours are clean and vibrant. 
One, 2" tear at right border. Discolouration around plate. Minor foxing throughout, consistent with age. 
 
This plate of a cactus is one of the most famous from Robert John Thornton’s ‘Temple of Flora’, which is undoubtedly the one of the finest English botanical plate books ever produced. It was first issued in parts between the years 1799 and 1807 then as a book in 1807 before the famous lottery edition in 1811. The work was intended as a pictorial celebration of the sexual system of Linnaeus and was accompanied by prose and verse. Thornton (1768-1837) employed the finest artists, engravers, printers, and colourists including Peter Henderson and Philip Reinagle. Each plate places the plant in an exotic and romantic setting. The mezzotint engraving was done by Robert Dunkarton, Richard Earlom, and William Ward, and the aquatint work by Joseph Constantine Stadler and Thomas Sutherland. Abraham Pether contributed the ‘moon-light’ for this particular plate of the night-blowing cereus. Its production exhausted his fortune, and he turned to Parliament for permission to run a lottery to pay his debts.