Papaver Somniferum

Henry Herman Evans

Papaver Somniferum is from a collection of a San Francisco collector who purchased a number of Evans' linocuts between 1964 and 1970. Papaver somniferum is commonly known as opium poppy or breadseed poppy. It is a species of plant from which opium and poppy seeds are harvested and is also a valuable ornamental plant for gardens.

Henry Herman Evans, publisher and printmaker, was born in Superior, Wisconsin in May 16, 1918. He attended the University of California, Berkeley; the City College of San Francisco; the San Francisco State College; and the University of Arizona. Evans opened Porpoise Book Shop, his first bookstore, in Tucson, Arizona in 1942 but relocated to San Francisco in 1944. In 1949 he purchased an 1852 Washington Hand Press, and began producing letterpress books as Peregrine Press. He famously rejected publishing Alan Ginsberg's "Howl" though he printed many of the Beat Generation authors, including Rexroth and Ferlinghetti.

In 1958, Evans began creating botanical prints from linoleum and over thirty-one years created around 1,400 subjects, primarily illustrations of plants and flowers, with a special focus on California plants. He was self-taught as a botanist and developed his unique style of rendering portraits of plants and flowers. He drew directly from living subjects which were portrayed life-size. His wife, Marsha Onomiya Evans, printed his linocuts on the Washington Hand Press and, after the printing was completed, the blocks were destroyed. Among his numerous publications, his most important books and portfolios include The State Flowers of the United States (1972); Botanical Prints: With Excerpts from the Artist's Notebooks (1977); and California Native Wildflowers (1985).