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Polyanthus

Clara Maria Pope, née Leigh (1767–1838), before 1820, 58.2 × 49.6 cm, watercolor and gouache, signed “Clara Maria Pope,” illustration for Samuel Curtis, The Beauties of Flora (Gamston: Curtis, 1820)
Polyanthus

Samuel Curtis conceived The Beauties of Flora around 1805, when he commissioned Thomas Baxter (1782–1821)—a young painter soon to make his name as a decorator of chinaware—to illustrate this ambitious but eventually abandoned project. Reissued in 1820 with additional plates by Clara Maria Pope, which brought the total of printed illustrations to ten, Curtis’s book was supposed to rival the monumental Temple of Flora published between 1798 and 1807 by Robert Thornton (1768–1837), who was nearly bankrupted by this immense undertaking. The darkened tonality and landscape setting of Pope’s Polyanthus—a hybrid of the wild primrose and primulas—was not only influenced by the somber mood of Thornton’s imagery, but also harmonized with Baxter’s earlier work.

 

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Polyanthus
Polyanthus

Clara Maria Pope, née Leigh (1767–1838), before 1820, 58.2 × 49.6 cm, watercolor and gouache, signed “Clara Maria Pope,” illustration for Samuel Curtis, The Beauties of Flora (Gamston: Curtis, 1820)

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