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Charlotte Caroline Sowerby (1820–1865) (sometimes C.C. Sowerby) was a 19th-century British scientific illustrator and a member of the extensive Sowerby family of naturalist-illustrators.
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Biography
Charlotte Caroline Sowerby was the oldest daughter of conchologist and illustrator George Brettingham Sowerby I and granddaughter of the naturalist and illustrator James Sowerby. Like her father and grandfather, she became a natural history illustrator. Not much is known of her life, but experts consider her illustrations to be of the highest quality.
Some of her work is included in the now-rare book The Illustrated Bouquet (E.G. Henderson & Son, 1857–1864), which includes images by a number of the best-known botanical artists of the period, including Augusta Innes Withers. Most of the plates in the book are by Sowerby, starting with Plate 10, and range from clematis, dianthus, petunia, and calceolaria to the Australian wildflower Sturt's desert pea (Swainsona formosa, formerly Clianthus dampieri). One illustration of gladiolus takes up a two-page spread.
She also contributed 12 plates to Edward Hamilton's Flora Homeopathica (1852–53).
Although most of Sowerby's known works are botanical illustrations, there is extant an 1854 watercolor by her of a quartz crystal with asbestos inclusions, apparently drawn from a specimen in her family's collection. There are also three drawings of volcanoes made for George Julius Poulett Scrope.
Legacy
In 1997, a detail of Sowerby's watercolor of Guzmania splendens was included in a British stamp issue.