1914 White Rose, Rosa involuta, large folio 37cm, Willmott, E. A. (b. 1858), botany

Beautiful chromolithograph after Alfred Parsons (1847-1920) from one of the great Masterpieces of 20th Century botanical book illustration.

The Genus Rosa was the masterpiece of Ellen Willmott and the culmination of a lifetimes’ study of the species.  It ranks with Redoute’s Les Roses as one of the definitive and most beautiful works on roses and remains an important reference for rosarians today.

The superb illustrations are a monument to Ellen Willmott's 'imperial heyday' at Warley Place, near Brentwood, Essex, where she employed as many as eighty-five gardeners.

37 x 27 cm

Nissen BBI 2166. 

Superb plate from the first edition of “the first great color-printed flower book of the 20th century,” one of only a limited number printed. Ellen Willmott was known to her contemporaries as “the greatest of living women gardeners” (Gertrude Jekyll). Himself an avid gardener, horticulturist and garden designer, Parsons produced “the first great color-printed flower book of the 20th century… It stands unrivaled, both as an account of the species and as a source of illustrations of wild roses” (Rix, The Art of the Botanist, 215).