Les roses, par P. J. Redouté, peintre de fleurs, Dessinateur en titre de la Classe de Physique de l'Institut et du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. Avec le texte, Par Cl. Ant. Thory, membre de plusieurs sociétés savantes
THE RARE LARGE-PAPER ISSUE OF REDOUTÉ’S ROSES
WITH THE ADDITIONAL SUITE OF PLATES IN BLACK ON OCHRE PAPER
Three volumes. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1817–1821–1824. First edition (bound from parts).
Folio (21” x 14 1/8”, 532mm x 358mm).
Vol. I: π2 1-202 211 22-392 [$1 signed]. 79 leaves, pp. 1-5 (half-title, blank, title, blank, preface) 6-156, [2] (table of illustrations, instructions to the binder). With 116 engraved plates (i.e., 58 in two states: black on ochre paper, and stipple-engraved à la poupée with additional hand color): a garland, a portrait of Redouté (both black, as issued) and 56 botanical illustrations.
Vol. II: 12 2-312 [$1 signed]. 62 leaves, pp. 1-5 (half-title, blank, title, blank, text) 6-122, [2] (table of illustrations, instructions to the binder). With 118 engraved botanical plates (i.e., 59 in two states: black on ochre paper and stipple-engraved à la poupée with additional hand color).
Vol. III: 12 2-312 322(–322) [$1 signed]. 63 leaves, pp. 1-5 (half-title, blank, title, blank, text) 6-125, [1] (errata). With 108 engraved botanical plates (i.e., 54 in two states: black on ochre paper and stipple-engraved à la poupée with additional hand color).
With 342 engraved botanical plates (i.e., 171 in two states: black on ochre paper and stipple-engraved à la poupée with additional hand color): a garland, a portrait of Redouté (both black as issued) and 169 botanical illustrations.
Bound in contemporary quarter green straight-grained morocco over green and red marbled boards by Tessier (his ticket to the front paste-down of vol. I). On the spine, five panels. Author and title gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the fourth.
Head- and tail-pieces bumped, split and with losses. Repaired tears to the spine of vol. I. A little rubbed generally, more so at the edges, with wear at the fore-corners. Foxing to the first and last handful of leaves (at times moderate), with mild foxing throughout. The (colored) plates are unusually fresh. Lacking the instructions to the binder in vol. III (322). Lacking tissue guards to pl. 41 of vol. I (Rosa bifera officinalis), pl. 33 of vol. II (Rosa pumila)and pl. 54 of vol. III (Rosa Pomponia Burgundica) (modern acid-free tissue supplied). A 40mm closed tear to 52 of vol. III (pp. 19-20), not affecting the text. “1587” (an inventory number?) in ink in an old hand to the front paste-down of each volume.
Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840) — the “Raphael of flowers” — floated above the political changes in France. He went from the patronage of Marie Antoinette — made desinatteur du Cabinet de la Reine in 1788 — to the dedication in the first volume (marked “year 10” of the revolutionary calendar) to “Citoyen Chaptal,” back to the patronage of the Empress Josephine and on through the Restoration; doubtless had he lived into the Second Republic he would have found great favor. He haunted the gardens first of the Petit Trianon and then superintended those at the chateau of Malmaison in Rueil (just south of Paris), which Josephine (whose given name was Marie-Josèphe-Rose) had bought. Provided with the raw materials by these women, Redouté set about illustrating.
The Roses follows the success of his Liliacées (completed 1816), during which he and his collaborators mastered the art of stipple-engraving à la poupée: copperplate-printing in which the individual colors are applied directly to the plate using a small cloth bundle (a poupée is a rag-doll) — and then finished, as usual, by hand. (At its best, there is no better way for an artist to ensure the accurate dissemination of his work.). The gardens at Malmaison contained hundreds of species and cultivars of roses, an anomaly in a period in which more exotic plants held a greater fascination. The text of Claude-Antoine Flory (1757–1827), himself a collector of roses, is considered a significant scientific contribution. Though Stafleu in his essay in the Catalogue of Redoutéana concedes that the principal enticement of Redouté’s work is aesthetic, he reminds us that the work’s “importance as a record of botanical knowledge of the genus Rosa should nevertheless not be underestimated” (op. cit., 26).
Redouté published the work in 30 fascicles (livraisons) from 22 March 1817 through 6 March 1824, with six plates per fascicle (excepting the tenth with none and the thirtieth with one). Stafleu-Cowan counts fifteen examples of this large-paper issue — with the additional hand-coloring carried out by Redouté himself — with the plates in two states. The Hunt catalogue of Printmaking In The Service Of Botany (1986) explains the choice of ochre paper for the monochrome prints: “the black impressions are always printed on paper with a strong ochre-yellow tint… black impressions on reflective white paper would have produced prints with grossly exaggerated tonal contrasts” (no. 25, p. 64).
Tessier (first at 165 rue de la Harpe, later, as here, no. 45) was a binder-finisher established in the XVIIc. He was the exclusive binder to Ferdinand Philippe, the duc d’Orleans — who would have succeeded Louis Philippe had he not predeceased him (and the July Monarchy fallen apart). Estelle Doheny’s set was also bound by Tessier.
Purchased for $400,000 at Sotheby's New York 18 June 2004 (lot 324).
Dunthorne 232; Hunt, Redoutéana 19; Nissen, BBI 1599; Pritzel 7455; Ray, French 89; Sitwell, Fine Flower Books, p. 71; Stafleu-Cowan 8748.
Item #JLR0647
Price: $750,000