Description des plantes rares cultivées a Malmaison et a Navarre
A PRESENTATION COPY
FROM THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE TO SIR HUMPHRY DAVY
EX-COLL. JOHN CAMPBELL, 2nd MARQUESS OF BREADALBANE and of
HENRY ROGERS BROUGHTON, 2nd BARON FAIRHAVEN
Two parts in one volume. Paris: P. Didot l’ainé, [1812–]1813. First edition.
Folio (20 ¾” x 13 5/8”, 526mm x 347mm): binder’s blank, π2(+χ1) 1-82, binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 19 leaves, pp. [6] (half-title, blank, title, blank, dedication to Josephine, blank) 1 2-31, [1] (description of the Correa). With 12 stipple-engraved plates after Redouté (10) and Bessa (2), color-printed à la poupée and hand-finished.
Bound in contemporary quarter red morocco over red faux-grain cloth with a gilt fillet border. Title and author gilt to the front cover. On the spine, seven panels with gilt fillet dividers. Itle gilt to the second panel, author gilt to the third, date (1813) gilt to the tail. All edges of the text-block gilt.
Worn at the hinges, and starting at the front. Cloth cockled, with some pulls and nicks at the back. Small patches of wear at the edges. Foxed generally, albeit more to the text than to the plates. With a long ink inscription in the hand of Lady Davy to the verso of the front binder’s blank. Armorial bookplate of Lord Broughton to the front paste-down.
Aimé Bonpland (1773–1858) gained renown in Europe for botanizing with Alexander von Humboldt in his excursion through the New World 1799–1804; his specimens were given to the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN), generating good-will and a pension from Napoleon. He eventually became a member of the entourage of the Empress Josephine, directing the gardens at Malmaison, her home in (what was then just west of) Paris. The present work is the second account of the plants at Malmaison, the first being Étienne Pierre Ventenat’s 1803 Jardin de La Malmaison. The aim of the Plantes rares was to demonstrate the more exotic species, with a particular focus on American plants, many of which had been collected by Bonpland and planted in Josephine’s garden.
Both works were illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), also a protègé of Josephine’s, conventionally known as the “Raphael of flowers.” The present work was limited to 325 examples, extending eventually to 64 illustrations of which most are after Redouté, the balance after Pancrace Bessa (1772–1846). The present volume contains the first two parts of an eventual 11, issued between 1812 and 1817.
The presentation in the hand of Jane, Lady Davy, explains well the provenance of the volume:
These Drawings of Plants, brought by the Botanist, Aimé Bonpland, the travelling companion of the Baron Alexandre de Humboldt, to the Empress Josephine, were given by herself at Malmaison, November 1813 to Sir Humphry Davy Bt. I consider them of value from the associations of Time, Names, & Place. I therefore transfer them, to John Marquis of Breadalbane for his Library at Taymouth. His Lordship must accept this book, as a grateful expression, of the interest I attach to his friendship. And as a remembrance, that the hospitality, & kindness, I have so often received at Taymouth, are associated with Persons & Pleasures, I can never forget.
Jane (Lady) Davy
Park St. December 4th 1847
Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829) was the great celebrity chemist of his day, pioneer of electrochemistry and the first to confirm that chlorine and iodine are elements. He was integral to the intellectual community of the Regency, even acting as an editor-agent to Wordsworth and Coleridge for the Lyrical Ballads, and knew or trained the great scientists of the age, from James Watt to Michael Faraday; he would go on to be President of the Royal Society. His trip to Paris was to collect the Prix du galvanisme, a prize meant to encourage electrical invention, from Napoleon.
Davy’s meeting with Empress Josephine — dedicatee of the work — at Malmaison took place on the 30th of November (just five months before her death; see the account in Paris’s 1831 Life of Sir Humphry Davy, vol. II p. 25ff.), and included a tour of the gardens with his wife, Jane (née Kerr, 1780–1855), into whose collection the book passed after Sir Humphry’s death. The volume, however, exited her collection as a gift to John Campbell, 2nd Marquess of Breadalbane, in 1847 as a remembrance of her stays at Taymouth Castle in the Scottish Highlands. Lord Breadalbane served as Lord Chamberlain of the Household (principal conduit between the Sovereign and the House of Lords) to Queen Victoria.
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 upon him. 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 American fortune, the Broughtons were able to buy and to maintain Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. The second Baron Fairhaven amassed[1] one of the great collections of natural history books and art (partly donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). The present volume was bought from the second part of his epochal sale at Sotheby’s London (29 November 2022, lot 269).
Nissen, BBI 207; Sitwell, Great Flower Books p. 51; Stafleu-Cowan 648.
[1] The volume was purchased by Heywood Hill at a Sotheby’s London auction 25 February 1946 (lot 520) for £16; Lord Fairhaven likely bought it from them.
Item #JLR0714
Price: $28,000