Dr. Robert John Thornton

WHITE LILY

circa 1800

Robert John Thornton (1765-1832) was attracted to natural history at an early edge and created his own botanical garden and an aviary as a boy. He graduated from Cambridge with a medical degree and set up practice as a London. He inherited his family fortune in 1797, which allowed Thornton the opportunity to devote time to his lifelong goal of creating an extensive scholarly work dedicated to the great classical Swedish naturalist, Carolus Von Linnaeus (1707-1778), also known as Carl von Linné, who developed a system for the classification of plants and animals, and is known as the father of taxonomy. Thornton's goal was to exceed any previous publication produced in any European country in terms of the scope of the project, the quality of the illustrations and the paper, as well as the beauty of the landscapes depicted as backgrounds for the plants. Thornton was the first person to incorporate landscape backgrounds with his botanical subjects. He wanted for the publication to be of both academic importance as well as artistic beauty. He dedicated his work and subsequent publication "The Temple of Flora; or Garden of Nature Picturesque Botanical Plates of the New Illustration of the Sexual System of Linnaeus" to Queen Charlotte. Thornton opened an art gallery to display the paintings from which the prints were made and as a place to sell subscriptions to the forthcoming books. Queen Charlotte, the Prince Regent, and the Emperor of Russia received copies of the book. Although the publication was not successful financially for Thornton, the stylization of the illustrated flowers and their historical, allegorical and fanciful backgrounds led to The Temple of Flora being considered one of the greatest botanical books of all time.