Allen, John Fisk | Victoria Regia — a monument to American color printing

Allen, John Fisk

Victoria Regia; or the Great Water Lily of America. With a brief account of its discovery and introduction into cultivation: with illustrations by William Sharp, from specimens grown at Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Boston: printed and published for the author by Dutton & Wentworth, 1854

Folio (679 x 540 mm). Letterpress title, dedication to Caleb Cope, 12pp. text, index, plate list, note, and errata, 6 chromolithographed plates by Sharp & Sons, with 5 after William Sharp, 1 after Allen. Expertly bound to style in quarter dark blue morocco and marbled paper-covered boards, publisher's paper lettered upper wrapper bound in. Housed in blue morocco-backed box.

First edition. A nineteenth-century botanical masterpiece of striking beauty and "among the most successful examples of early chromolithography" (Reese).

The Victoria Regia; or the Great Water Lily of America, provides an appropriate showcase for this gigantic water lily, first discovered along the Amazon River and then taken to Britain for cultivation. The so-called "vegetable wonder" was described by Sir R.H. Schomburg in 1837. From the details he gave, the botanist John Lindley suggested that the lily was a new genera and put forward the name Victoria Regia in honor of Queen Victoria during the first year of her reign. "The giant water-lily is a spectacular flower; nineteenth century commentators describe with amazement the vast dimensions of its floating leaves, which could exceed two meters in diameter, and its great white flower, which opened in the evening and closed again at dawn in a truly lovely spectacle" (Oak Spring Flora).

In 1853, John Fisk Allen, a well-respected horticulturalist and author of a treatise on viticulture, cultivated a seed from the water-lily given him by Caleb Cope, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the man in whose garden the water-lily first flowered in America on 21 August 1851. Working at his home in Salem, Massachusetts, Allen tended the seed from January to July, when, on the evening of July 21st, the flower finally bloomed.

Though the first plate of the Victoria Regia is based on a sketch Allen composed himself, the remaining five plates, which show the gradual development of the flowers from bud to full bloom, are attributable to William Sharp, a British-born artist and pioneer of chromolithography then working in Boston. Superlative in concept, color, and execution, the present plates became the first benchmark of the art.

One of the most beautiful flower books ever produced.

REFERENCES:

Great Flower Books 69; Hofer Bequest 72; Hunt, Printmaking in the Service of Botany 56; Nissen, BBI 16; Reese, Stamped with a National Character 19; Stafleu & Cowan, TL2 85; Tomasi, An Oak Spring Flora 106