The Dragon Arum
From The Temple of Flora — the strangest, most theatrical plate Thornton ever staged.
- Work
- The Dragon Arum, from The Temple of Flora, or Garden of Nature
- Artist / naturalist
- William Ward, after Peter Charles Henderson and Robert John Thornton
- Origin & date
- England, 1801
- Held by
- Wikimedia Commons (Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales)
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$19.00
The story
If any single plate explains Robert John Thornton's whole quixotic project, it is this one: a dragon arum's blackish-maroon spathe rearing against a storm-lit volcanic backdrop, complete with distant eruption and falling embers. The Temple of Flora paired botanically exact flowers with full Romantic landscape settings, and nowhere did engraver Peter Henderson and printmaker William Ward push the theatrics further than here — the plant's genuinely strange, faintly sinister form (it is pollinated by flies drawn to its carrion smell) practically demanded a gothic stage. What to notice: the flower itself is drawn with total scientific fidelity even as its setting turns operatic — Thornton's insistence that accuracy and drama were never in conflict is the whole argument of his ruinous, beautiful book.
About this reproduction
- Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from Wikimedia Commons (Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales)’s open-access release.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper: smooth, no glare.
- Color-managed to the source scan.
- Ships in 5–8 business days; satisfaction guarantee.