ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

James Sowerby and the White Waterlily

• In Event: Practitioners, Artisans and Instruments in the Making of Premodern Science, III

English Abstract

Eighteenth-century botanical publications depended on the expertise of painters and engravers for plant illustrations, creating complex relationships between academic botanists and artisans. For example, the early volumes of English Botany were initially published under the illustrator James Sowerby’s name, with editor James Edward Smith adding his own only after the work gained success. This paper examines Sowerby’s depiction of the White Waterlily in the first edition of English Botany, arguing that Sowerby’s careful observation of specimens enabled him to make a significant, though unacknowledged, contribution to botanical knowledge.
The White Waterlily displays a remarkable gradation between petals and stamens. This gradation became a prime example of floral organ homology in the second half of the nineteenth century and was often depicted as a linear series of individual organs. This representational format appears as the endpoint of a trajectory that began with depictions of whole flowers (e.g. in English Botany, 1794) and, occasionally, of one or two isolated intermediates (around 1800). However, examination of Sowerby’s original watercolour, the basis for the 1794 engraving, reveals that he had already depicted individual organs in a linear sequence, though this was omitted from publication. More significantly, his illustration recorded the precise insertion points of intermediate forms, demonstrating that the continuity of floral organs reflects an inherent natural order rather than an artificial arrangement. This finding is a striking example of the epistemic contributions of botanical illustrators.

Author

• Ulrich Stegmann, University of Aberdeen