J. Forbes Royle | Illustrations of the botany... of the Himalayan mountains, London, 1839, 2 vols, contemporary russia

J. Forbes Royle

Illustrations of the botany and other branches of the natural history of the Himalayan mountains, and of the flora of Cashmere. London: Wm. H. Allen, 1839

FIRST EDITION, 2 volumes, 4to (360 x 260mm.), hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece, hand-coloured lithographed plan, 100 lithographed plates, all but 3 coloured by hand, contemporary russia, joints and spines ends worn, one cover coming loose

John Forbes Royle (1798-1858) was a British botanist, and expert in materia medica, based for much of his professional life in British occupied India. He ran the botanical garden at Saharanpur, founded by the East India Company as a means of introducing new plants into their trade economy, during which he specialised in learning the Hindu tradition of botanical remedies which formed the basis of his publication On the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine (1837). His Illustrations of the botany... of the Himalayan mountains was published when he returned to England as a professor of materia medica at King's College, London.

A "pioneering ecological study" (Rix) on the trees, shrubs and flowers of the Himalayan region of the Indian sub-continent, illustrated with delightful images after Vishnuperand: "the most talented of the native Indian [botanical] artists" (Blunt). He was employed by many of the most important plant collectors and botanists of the time, including Nathaniel Wallich and Robert Wight, and unfortunately, he remains one of only a handful of early 19th-century Indian botanical artists whose names are known - this in itself is an indication of the high esteem in which his work was held by western botanists at the time. An examination of the large collection of his original drawings still held by the India Office Library and the Kew Herbarium confirms his reputation amongst his contemporaries. The transfer of the drawings onto stone was carried out by the greatest of the early lithographers of botanical subjects: the Maltese born Maxim Gauci, and, unusually, Forbes also gives the names of the colourists: Mr. Clarke (probably John Clark who colored the plates in Wallich's Plantae Asiaticae) and Mr. Barclay.

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books, p. 74; Nissen BBI 1690; M. Rix, The Art of the Plant World, p. 183; Stafleu TL2 1119