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John Fleming (1747- 1829)
John Fleming was a surgeon who served in the Indian Medical Service in Bengal from 1768 to 1813. As with many physicians of the period he was very interested in botany. Fleming's particular interest was in plants of medical or economic use. This interest encouraged him to collect plants from many parts of India. For a period he was appointed Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden while William Roxburgh was on leave of absence. Fleming returned to England in 1813 and died in London in 1829.
The Fleming Drawings Collection The 1,160 drawings that make up the Fleming collection consist of copies of drawings originally completed for William Roxburgh (1751-1815). Roxburgh was Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Garden and Chief Botanist of the East India Company. During this time Roxburgh recruited a team of Indian artists to draw botanical specimens. By the time he retired in 1813, a total of 2,542 drawings had been completed. Roxburgh had a vast collection of drawings that were used as the basis for a number of key works such Hortus Bengalensis (1814) and the Flora Indica (1820-1824) edited by William Carey (1761-1834), and Plants of the Coast of Coromandel (1795-1819) published at the expense of the East India Company. Copies of these drawings were made for Roxburgh’s friends including John Fleming. Thirteen or fourteen folio volumes of watercolour drawings
of plants that had once been in Fleming’s ownership
were purchased by the Natural History Museum in 1882. Many
of these drawings were of medicinal plants. They were disbound
and added to the drawings collection as loose sheets.
Exhibition and publication details In 1980, an exhibition was mounted of a selection of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Indian botanical paintings recording the indigenous and introduced flora of the subcontinent. They were commissioned by the Honourable East India Company and executed in watercolour by native artists, variously lent from the collections the British Museum (Natural History), India Office Library, Linnean Society of London, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation , Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. The Mango and Palm illustrations were exhibited in this exhibition. Knapp, S. (2003) Potted Histories: an artistic voyage
through plant exploration. Scriptum Editions: London.
335pp
References and further reading Archer, M. (1962) Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library. HMSO: London. 116pp Chakraverty, R. K. et al. (2003) Directory of plants in the Botanic Gardens of India. Flora of India Series 4. Botanical Survey of India : Kolkata. 555p. Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (1980) A selection of late 18th and early 19th century Indian botanical paintings recording the indigenous and introduced flora of the subcontinent, commissioned by the Honourable East India Company and executed in watercolour by native artists, variously lent from the collections the British Museum (Natural History), India Office Library, Linnean Society of London, and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Carnegie-Mellon University : Pittsburgh. 72pp. Roxburgh, W. (1814) Hortus Bengalensis or a catalogue of the plants growing in the honourable East India Company's botanic garden at Calcutta. Mission Press : Serampore. 105pp. Roxburgh, W.; Carey, W. (ed.) (1820-1824) Flora Indica: or, Descriptions of Indian plants. Calcutta. 2 vols. East India Company (1795-1819) Plants of the Coast of
Coromandel : selected from drawings and descriptions presented
to the ... Company by W. Roxburgh. London. 3 vols.
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