Classic Roses

According to fossil evidence, the rose (rosa, from the Romans) is estimated to be about 35 million years old from fossils found in sedimentary rock deposits in Colorado, USA. Roses have a long history as symbols of love, beauty, war, and politics.  The first recorded roses were found in a series of frescos made by the Minoans in Crete around 1500 BC.  
Later, in one version of Hesiod’s Theogony (c. 700 BC), Aphrodite, whilst running to her dying lover, Adonis, pricked her foot on a white rose that turned red when her blood fell on it. The Romans used roses as confetti, medicinally, and for perfume. Cleopatra used roses as bait for her lovers whilst Nero used them profligate ostentation.
In the fifteenth century the white rose became the symbol of the House of York [Edward IV, Edward V and Richard III (r. 1461-1485)]; the red rose for Lancaster [Henry IV, V and VI (r. 1399-1461) as two cadet families of the Royal House of Plantagenet battled for the throne of England, culminating in the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487).
In the seventeenth century roses and rose water were used as legal tender and as barter. Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, developed a collection of roses at Chateau de Malmaison in the 1800s which was where Pierre Joseph Redouté worked as a botanical illustrator. His 1824 watercolour collection “Les Rose,” is still considered one of the finest series of botanical illustrations ever produced.
The genus Rosa has some 300 species throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Cultivation to produce variations (variegata in taxonomy terms) began 5,000 years ago in China. Cultivated roses were introduced into Europe from China in the eighteenth century. Most modern roses can be traced back to this ancestry. These roses were repeat bloomers, making them of interest to hybridizers.
These 12 quality prints from the 1960’s are classics, some of which were bred in the 1950’s – many of them in the United States. Some of the older classics were bred in France and the Netherlands. We do not know the artist nor anything of the genesis of these prints since they have no identifying marks, and we can find no history for them.
They are part of the collection of prints discovered some months after Hugh Evelyn’s death over 10 years ago. Together with all the other prints in this collection,  they had been in storage for at least 30, perhaps 40, years.  Since these prints were found among a large collection of other prints, all of which were published between 1956 and 1972, we must assume that these images are at least 50 years old.
He that sweetest rose will find
  Must find love’s prick, and Rosalind.
Touchstone in As You Like It (Act III Scene II)

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
   That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
   That’s sweetly played in tune.
Robbie Burns