Choix des plus belles fleurs prises dans différentes familles du règne végétal et de quelques branches des plus beaux fruits groupées quelquefois, et souvent animées par des insectes et des papillons gravées, imprimées en couleur et retouchées au pinceau avec un soin qui doit répondre de leur perfection dédié a LL. AA. RR. les Princesses Louise et Marie d'Orléans par P. J. Redouté Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. . .
THE FAIRHAVEN SET ON LARGE PAPER
IN PARTS, IN THE PUBLISHER’S WRAPPERS
In 36 parts. Paris: C.L.F. Panckoucke for the author, C.L.F. Panckoucke, Bossange père, Treuttel & Wurtz, Dufars and Arthus-Bertrand; 1-6: 1827; 7-11: 1828; 12-22: 1829; 23-24: 1830; 25-30; 1831; 32[1]-35: 1832; 36: 1833. First edition, large-paper issue.
Folio (21 1/16” x 13 ½”, 511mm x 343mm).
Part 1: π2. 2 leaves, pp. [4] (title, blank, 2pp. advertisement). With 4 hand-colored stipple-engraved plates.
Parts 2-35: each with 4 hand-colored stipple-engraved plates.
Part 36: 12 2-42 χ2 (χ2 blank). 10 leaves, pp. 1-3 (table alphabétique title-page, advice, table) 4-17, 3 blanks. With 4 hand-colored stipple-engraved plates.
With 144 hand-colored stipple-engraved plates in toto.
Each part presented in the publisher’s printed brown paper wrappers. The first six parts with a pasted overslip reading “PRIX : VINGT-QUATRE FRANCS.” Part numeration completed in manuscript. All edges of the text-block and plates untrimmed. Each plate with a tissue guard. The whole presented in a red morocco brass-latched drop-front clam-shell case lined in felt, by Riviere & Son (their gilt stamp to the lower inside lip of the lid). Title, author and date (1827) gilt to the front of the lid. On the spine, six raised bands. Title gilt to the second panel, author gilt to the fourth, date (1827) gilt to the tail.
The wrappers frayed and split (the final eight part-wrappers being about an inch taller, the top and bottom edges are curled in by the box). A small repaired split to the front wrapper of pt. 1, a long repaired tear to the front wrapper of pt. 36. The wrapper for pt. 31 is reused from pt. 12. Some soiling to the wrappers throughout, with a handful showing signs of water. Foxed generally, with tanning limited largely to the tissue-guards. The title of the first plate of pt. 27 with a printed caption of “Gentiane sans tige. Gentianæ acaulis.”[2] struck-through in graphite and corrected above in graphite manuscript “Pivoine” and “Pæonia” — the correction noted in MS in the “table alphabétique,” which also has checks and crosses, as well as counts of how many plates feature each species.
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 “Citoyen Chaptal,” back to the patronage of the Empress Josephine and on through the Restoration (the present work is dedicated to the two eldest daughters of Louis-Philippe I, the future Queen of Belgium and Duchess of Württemberg); 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 château of Malmaison in Rueil (just south of Paris), which Josephine (whose given name was Marie-Josèphe-Rose; her love for flowers nearly guaranteed) had bought. Provided with the raw materials by these women, Redouté set about illustrating.
After the great projects of the Liliacées (1802–1816) and the Roses (1817–1824), Redouté set about choosing the most beautiful of his botanical portraits, including several fruits and bouquets, into a sort of greatest-hits album: the Choix des plus belles fleurs (Selection of the most beautiful flowers). Redouté and his collaborators had 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 by hand. (At its best, there is no better way for an artist to ensure the accurate dissemination of his work, supervising coloration even before presswork.)
Stafleu-Cowan reports that “a restricted number of copies was issued in folio (24 frs per part), the majority was in quarto (12 frs per part);” earlier sources (e.g., Hunt, Redoutéana) claim that there were only “five copies on large paper, reported to have been finished by Redouté himself,” though already there is doubt: “there is reason to believe the initial number was larger than this (op. cit., p. 60). Certainly the double price (864 francs for a work that took 6 years to complete; a rough estimate for an unskilled laborer’s wages in northern France around 1830 is about 678 francs annually) will have limited production, as will the hand-coloring by the artist himself, though that is difficult to ascertain. In all, this folio example surpasses the coloration of the quarto issues we have handled.
Henry Rogers Broughton (1900–1973), second baron, was the brother of the first Baron Fairhaven (Urban Huttleston Rogers Broughton), a title created for their father, Urban Hanlon Broughton, who died before it could be bestowed. Their mother was the heiress of Henry H. Rogers, the stupendously wealthy oil magnate who became a senior executive of Standard Oil. Armed with their grandfather’s fortune, the Broughtons were able to buy and to maintain Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. The second Baron Fairhaven amassed one of the great collections of natural history books and art (much donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). The present volume was bought from the second part of his epochal sale (Sotheby’s London, 29 November 2022, lot 176).
Hunt, Redoutéana 21; Nissen, BBI 1591; Sitwell, Great Flower Books p. 72; Stafleu-Cowan 8750.
[1] Part 31 is in an altered wrapper for part 12, and so bears the date of 1829; Stafleu-Cowan reports that it was issued 17 March 1832. Prof. H.-W. Lack (private correspondence) writes that the "unbound copy of Choix is remarkable" and is undertaking a study of the wrappers of this set.
[2] This remarkable error passes unnoted in the bibliographies consulted; a gentian is nothing like a peony. We thank Ms. Charlotte Tancin, FLS, librarian of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, who confirms (private correspondence) that the Hunt large-paper copy bears the same incorrect caption and is corrected in what appears to be the same hand. Three of our four quarto examples are captioned “Pivoine officinale à fleurs simples. Pæonia officinalis mas.”, the fourth as here. The change was made before the numeration of the plates.
Item #JLR0669
Price: $475,000