Georg Dionysius Ehret

Georg Dionysius Ehret (1708-1770)
Gloriosa superba (Glory Lily)
signed 'G.D.Ehret Pinx' (lower right) and inscribed 'Methonica Malabarorum H.L.B. app.' (lower centre)
pencil and watercolour on vellum, heightened with white
20 7/8 x 14½ inches (530 x 368mm.)
AN EXCEPTIONAL IMAGE OF THE GLORY LILY. Ehret portrays this elegantly beautiful plant at three stages of flowering from small bud to full flower, as well as showing a ripe seed pod, and examples of the seeds themselves. A native of tropical Africa and Asia, and a member of the Liliacae family, the Glory Lily is a slender herbaceous vine growing from a thick tuberous rootstock with slender strap-like leaves with tendril-like tips, the spectacular flowers are born on long stalks. All parts of the plant, especially the tubers, contain highly poisonous alkaloid toxins.
The reference 'H.L.B. app.' refers to Paul Hermann's Horti Academici Lugduno-Batavi catalogus exhibens plantarum omnium nomina (Leiden: 1687), an important catalogue of the Leiden university botanic garden's exotic plants including the Glory Lily, named by Hermann 'Methonica Malabarorum'. This name was later rejected by Linnaeus in favour of 'Gloriosa superba'.
This drawing is a finished version of an image that is also known from a preliminary pencil and watercolour drawing on paper, now in the Natural History Museum in London (see G.Calmann Ehret Flower Painter Extraordinary [1977] p.110 and illustrated as plate 84). This preliminary sketch was part of an album of 248 sketches on paper, a number of which can be shown to be initial ideas for Trew's Plantae Selectae (1750-1773) and Ehret's Plantae et Papiliones Rariores (1748-1749). Given Ehret's demonstrable willingness to accept Linnean nomenclature and the publication dates of 1747, 1748 and 1750 mentioned above, the present drawing can plausibly be dated to the 1740's.