EDWARDS, SYDENHAM TEAST (1768 - 1819), botanical and animal draughtsman

Christened at Usk, 5 August 1768, son of Lloyd Pittel Edwards, a schoolmaster and organist at Usk and Abergavenny, and Mary (Reece?) his wife (of Llantilio Crossenny).

His drawing ability brought him to the notice of William Curtis, botanist and entomologist, who sent him to London to study drawing.

From 1798 to 1814 Edwards contributed nearly all the drawings for The Botanical Magazine and several for Flora Londinensis. He issued six parts of Cynographia Britannica, 1800-5, consisting of coloured engravings of the various breeds of dogs in Great Britain, and also supplied the plates for The New Botanic Garden, 1805-7, which was reissued in 1812 as The New Flora Britannica. In 1814 he withdrew from The Botanical Magazine and started The Botanical Register. He exhibited twelve pictures at the Royal Academy between 1792 and 1814.

Water-colour drawings by Edwards and engravings after him, mainly of birds, animals, and botanical subjects, are to be found in private hands in Wales and in such public collections as those in the National Museum of Wales, the National Library of Wales, the British Museum, and the South Kensington Museum.

Edwards died 8 February 1819 and was buried at Chelsea Old Church.

Author

• Megan Ellis, (1906 - 2001)

Sources

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• T. M. Rees, Welsh painters, engravers and sculptors, 1527–1911 (1912)
• Redgrave, A Dictionary of Artists of the English School (London 1878)

Further Reading

• Wikipedia Article: Sydenham Edwards

Additional Links

• VIAF: 34803935
• Wikidata: Q1118055

Published date: 1959

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/