Nicolai Josephi Jacquin Selectarum stirpium americanarum historia in qua ad linnæanum systema determinatæ descriptæque sistuntur plantæ illæ quas in insulis Martinica, Iamaica, Domingo, aliisque et in vicinæ continentis parte, observavit rariores; adjectis iconibus ab autoris archetypa pictis
“ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND INTRIGUING BOTANICAL BOOKS
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY… INDISPUTABLY ONE OF THE RAREST”
[Vienna: 1780–1781.] Second edition, expanded, with the plates replaced by watercolors.
Folio (18 3/16” x 12 7/16”, 467mm x 316mm): 3 binder’s blanks, A-Mm2, 2 binder’s blanks [$2 signed]. 70 leaves, pp. 1-7 (2pp. dedication to Francis I, 4pp. preface, text) 8-136, [4] (4pp. explanation of the “plates”). With a watercolor, gouache, ink and graphite title-page and 264 watercolor illustrations, of which 2 are folding and the final 6 with additional ink manuscript.
Bound in contemporary diced russia (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down) by Christian Kalthoeber (with his ticket to the verso of the front free end-paper). Wide gilt rolls to the boards, including tau-mæanders, scrollwork and pineapple corner ornaments. One the spine, six pairs of raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel: “JACQUIN’S/ AMERICAN/ PLANTS”. The panels with a pointillé lobed compartment within scrollwork. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Gilt inside dentelle. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text block gilt, concealing marbling. Celadon silk marking ribbon (laid in).
Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Some scuffing, particularly to the front. Without the printed half-title (as with all examples of this setting of the text). Stub-tear to pl. 215 (folding). Titling in graphite to some of the early watercolors. Odd spots or very small patches of soiling, but altogether a near-fine example. Binder’s ticket of Christian Kalthoeber to the verso of the front paste-down, along with a few shelf-marks in graphite manuscript. Price (“£42. 0. 0”) in graphite manuscript to the recto of the second free end-paper.
Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin (1727–1817), at the request of Francis I the Holy Roman Emperor, traveled through the West Indies, collecting specimens for the Schönbrunn Palace (which Alexander von Humboldt studied in preparation for his America trip). Jacquin was a committed correspondent with Carl Linnaeus; initially, as here, he is pure pupil and admirer; with time, he would come to debate the master botanist. The first edition of his “history of certain American plants”[1] (1763) is a landmark in the description of American species. Jacquin here gave the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) — now one of the world’s most important and valuable crops — its current binomial name for the first time.
Some 15 years later, established as professor of botany and chemistry at the University of Vienna, Jacquin set out to create a de luxe reissue, with (nearly) identical text but 80 additional images of the plants, bringing the number from 184 to 264. Most unusually, however, he chose not to have the plates reprinted and new copper cut, but to replace all the plates with watercolors. Scholars — and here Santiago Madriñán’s 2013 Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin’s American Plants is indispensable — estimate the total print run of this second edition between 18 and 25 examples (but see below). With 265 paintings per example — the botanical images plus an illustrated title (H. Walter Lack has surveyed the title-pages of the second edition in his 1998 article in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine) — that would engender the painting of 4,770–6,625 individual watercolors.
Thus, it can safely be assumed, the work was carried out by a small and trusted circle of painters in Vienna working under Jacquin’s supervision. Four surviving examples have title-pages signed: two definitely by Franz Bauer, one perhaps by his brother Ferdinand, and one signed by Joseph Hofbauer. The title-pages were left to the artists’ discretion; Lack identifies a Type A title-page — based on Jacquin’s own example, held at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (177687-E) — and Type B, which is the various set of other designs; the present example conforms to Type A.
The limited circulation of the work, for which subscriptions were made by the crowned heads of Europe as well as other bibliophiles (Jacquin purloined an example for the King of Spain, who had been late with his subscription fee, from the pope’s physician, Dr. Salichetti; Madriñán casts doubt on this particular anecdote), has made the book one of the most sought-after works of eighteenth-century natural history. Mills, in the introduction to the 2016 Folio Society facsimile of the example held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, crowns it “one of the most beautiful and intriguing books of the eighteenth century… [and] indisputably one of the rarest” (p. 10).
The volume passed through the workshop of the distinguished German-born binder Christian Kalthoeber, who set up shop in London as an apprentice to Johann Ernst Baumgarten. Kalthoeber was one of the most sought-after binders, famously being invited by Catherine the Great to St. Petersburg. Perhaps he bound it for the first recorded owner (by means of his sale catalogue, 16 March to 25 May 1829 with Evans, London; lot 4380), George Hibbert (1757–1837). Hibbert was a wealthy merchant — with long family ties to Jamaica, whence doubtless his interest in Jacquin’s Caribbean plants — set up in Clapham Common a botanical garden that was considered finer than Sir Joseph Banks’s collection at Kew.
Payne and Foss (Charles Lamb dubbed them “Pain and Fuss”) were the purchasers of the lot for an astounding £31:10:0. Their bookshop at 88 and then 81 Pall Mall was a major literary hub of Regency London, most notably for Sir Thomas Phillips. Likely they then sold the volume — perhaps for £42 (a pretty good mark-up) — to Beriah Botfield (1807–1863). Botfield was educated at Harrow and Christ Church before being elected as a Member of Parliament for Ludlow. He was a committed naturalist and bibliographer, even going so far as to set up a private press at Norton Hall, his family seat. His library was sold by Christie’s London 20 March 1994, in which the present item was lot 70.
The work has come to auction only two further times, and there are at least 36 examples in institutional collections (cf. Madriñán’s 2013 census of 30). The number created, therefore, cannot have been 18 as widely asserted in the XVIIIc, nor “not over 20 copies” (BM (NH)) and certainly in excess of the modern assessment of 25.
Dunthorne 152; Nissen, BBI 980; Pritzel 4363; Stafleu-Cowan 3249; Stearn, Great Flower Books p. 105.
Lack, H. Walter. “Jacquin’s ‘Selactarum Stirpium Americanarum Historia’ the extravagant second edition and its title pages” in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 15.3 (August, 1998) 194-214.
Madriñán, Santiago. Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin's American Plants. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013.
Census of institutional holdings (*** marks examples not in Madriñán)
United States
1. New York Public Library (*KF+++ 1780)
2. Morgan Library, New York (E2 79 C, title-page signed “Joseph Hofbauer” (?))
3. New York Botanical Garden Library (lf QK98 .J3 1780)
4. ***Smithsonian Libraries (QK225 .J212s 1780 folio, lacking pp. 9-136)
5. Library of Congress (QK98 .J3)
6. John Hay Library at Brown (3-SIZE QK98 .J25x1780)
7. Arnold Arboretum at Harvard (GEN Fol. 2 J16 1780)
8. Corning Library at the Holden Arboretum (RARE D4.06)
9. Oak Spring (00001552)
10. Lilly Library at the University of Indiana (QK98 .J3)
11. Memorial Library at University of Wisconsin, Madison (Thordarson T 3376)
Colombia
12. Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia (F. Mutis 3867)
United Kingdom
13. British Library, London (40.i.5)
14. British Library, London (C.55.l.3)
15. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (qF15, in three volumes)
16. Natural History Museum, London (581.9(79P9.9) JAC F CAT U)
17. Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society, London (581.9 (7V) JAC, in three volumes)
18. Weston Library at the University of Oxford (RR. y. 119)
France
19. Bibliothèque mazarine at the Institut de France (Fol DM 111* Réserve)
20. ***Bibliothèque Sainte-Genevieve at the Université de Paris (FOL S 150(4) INV 269 RES; binding with the arms of Pius VI — mis-catalogued as “[circa 1763]” but with 264 painted illustrations)
21. ***Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, Strasbourg (100055184 — mis-catalogued as “[circa 1763]” but with 264 painted illustrations)
Spain
22. Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid (Ff(72)JAC)
Italy
23. Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, Milan (I SC VI 59, signed “Franc Bauer Fecit”)[2]
Netherlands
24. Universiteit Leiden ((KL) (1407 A 12))
25. Teylers Museum (131e 142)
Germany
26. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Libri impr. rari fol. 500, ex-coll. Royal library)
27. ***Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich (Cod.icon. 10)
28. Universität Göttingen (GR 2 BOT V, 9231; text and plates in separate volumes)
29. ***Technische Universität, Darmstadt (gr. fol. 2/186)
30. Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Stuttgart (Nat.G.fol.763)
31. ***Stadtbibliothek, Mainz (II f:2º /388)
Austria
32. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (177687-E, Jacquin’s own copy)
33. Universitätsbibliothek Salzburg (IV 80903)
34. Universitätsbibliothek Wien, FB Botanik (241/4)
35. Universitätsbibliothek Wien, Hauptbibliothek (III-191881)
Poland
36. Biblioteka Narodowa (SD W.4.1631)
Denmark
37. ***Royal Library, Copenhagen (Fol. max. Bot. Amerika)
[1] The title can be rendered into English as “Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin’s history of some American plants, in which they are placed in the Linnaean system, having been both sorted and described; the plants are the rarer of those that he observed on the islands of Martinique, Jamaica, Domingo (i.e., Hispaniola) and others also in the region of that part of the continent; to which are added imaged painted according to the originals of the author.” The first-edition title is identical except for the final sentence: adjectis iconibus in solo natali delineatis (“to which are added images drawn on the spot”).
[2] Reported in both Lack and Madriñán, the second edition does not appear in the library’s on-line catalogue. Was it deaccessioned?
Item #JLR0601
Price: $450,000