Title

"Histoire des Plantes Grasses"

By Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Biography of the Artist.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1799 – 1819)

Born in Saint-Hubert in 1759, Pierre-Joseph Redouté was a Belgian artist and botanist. He began his career as interior decorator and painter of cathedrals of Northern Europe pieces. In 1782 Redouté joined his elder brother - Antoine Ferdinand, an interior decorator and scenery designer - in Paris. There he was discovered by the botanist C. L. L’Héritier de Brutelle, who trained him as a botanical artist and employed him to illustrate his publications. L’Héritier also introduced Redouté to the French court and help him to be appointed as official painter of the Queen’s Cabinet. Some years later Redouté also become the official Artist of the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. During Josephine patronage Redouté produced his most celebrated plates illustrating many exotic plants for the greatest French botanical works of his period: the “Jardin de Malmaison” (1803-1805), a large format collection of 120 plates , followed by “Les Lilacees” (1802-1816) a monumental work with 486 plates on the lilac flower; “Traité des Arbres et Arbustes”(1799-1819).  Redouté based these works on the rare and extensive specimens of the garden of he château Malmaison in Rueil,  following Josephine’s wish to document every plant scientifically.

The famous "Les Roses" printed in a deluxe folio edition, dedicated to Redouté’s new patroness, the Duchesse de Berry.

Redouté is considered the greatest of all painters of the golden era of botanical illustrations. He was nicknamed “The Raphael of flowers” for his exquisite softness and luminosity  and three-dimensionality of the subjects.

Redouté used various techniques to produce magnificent works: he also developed the new special technique of colour printing with stipple engravings à la poupée, with final touches of color for vibrancy, with which he produced some of the finest colored botanical illustrations ever published. Redouté  learned this tecnique from Francesco Bartolozzi while visiting England with French botanist C.-L. l'Hriter de Brutelle (1746-1800). This technique had not been applied to flowers before and it allowed for the first time the artist to reproduce the delicacy and colors  of a flower's form.  In many case he also applied colors to engraved plates separately by hand for superior printed illustrations  using light graduations of color with occasional strokes of stronger body color in paintings.

In the preface of is work “Choix des Plus Belles Fleurs” Redouté wrote “…and illustrations of the plant kingdom, captivating the eye of the amateur who is a complete stranger to natural sciences, guiding him from admiration of their portrayal to contemplation of the plants themselves, from love of art to study of nature – how greatly these masterpieces increased the numbers of lovers of botany!”.

Description of the work.