Plum - Purple and Yellow plums, 1817 c.
George Brookshaw was a publisher of botanical subjects as well as a teacher of flower painting and his own artist. The ninety plates of his dramatic folio, Pomona Britannica, depict two hundred and fifty-six varieties of fruit grown in some of London’s most celebrated gardens and in particular, the Royal Gardens at Hampton Court.
Pomona Britannica is engraved in aquatint and stipple, printed in colour and finished by hand in watercolour. In most of the plates the fruit, sometimes accompanied by it’s flower, is represented against an aquatint background of dark brown, which although plain suggests a sense of high drama. At a time when folio flower-books such as Robert Thornton’s Temple of Flora were having a difficulty finding purchasers, Brookshaw’s fruits proved a success. Indeed, in 1817 a fine quarto edition was published with little expense spared.
Brookshaw followed up his successes with A New Treatise on Flower Painting: or Every Lady her own drawing master and two companion volumes on birds and fruit. However, none of his successive works could truly match the grandeur of Pomona Britannica, which may be considered one of the finest colour plate books ever published.
