Mary Elizabeth Rosenberg | Corona Amaryllidacea, Bath, [no date]

Mary Elizabeth Rosenberg

Corona Amaryllidacea. Bath: C.A. Bartlett for the author, [No date, advertisement leaf dated 1839]

Folio (453 x 351 mm.), letterpress title-page, dedication to Lord James O'Bryen, 3rd Marquess of Thomond (President of the Bath Horticultural and Botanical Society), 9 original watercolour drawings (of 8, one extra), all but one initialled by the artist, modern green half morocco, tissue repair to verso of title-page

A VERY RARE WORK ON LILIES.

Mary Elizabeth Rosenberg (1819-1914) was an English flower painter who exhibited at the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. This exquisite early work contains virtuosic illustrations of lilies, dedicated to Lord James O’Bryen, the President of the Bath Horticultural and Botanical Society, where Rosenberg was from. Later, she also became a member of the Institute of Painters in Water-Colours in London. This work is of the highest rarity; three copies have been recorded at auction in the past sixty years, and this exceptionally contains one further illustration, perhaps a gift for Lord O’Bryen. 

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books, p. 74; Nissen BBI 1678; Stafleu TL2 9516 (with hand-coloured lithographs)