Iris Lusitanica. Portuguese Flag.

Sydneham Edwards (1768 - 1819)

Initially worked for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, until a dispute with the publishers when he started his own rival magazine The Botanical Register. He was born in Monmouthshire, a from an early age demonstrated a precocious talent for drawing and when only 11 years old had copied plates from Flora Londinensis. A friend of William Curtis, the publisher visited the Edwards and recommended the boy to Curtis. Curtis proceeded to have Edwards trained in both botany and botanical illustration. Edwards was a prolific talent and between 1787 and 1815 he produced over 1,700 watercolours for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. He established The Botanical Register in 1815 after a disagreement with John Sims, Curtis’s editor.

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