Jardin de la Malmaison
Two volumes in one. Paris: Crapelet for the author, 1803[–1805] (An XI). First edition.
Folio (20 11/16” x 13 5/8”, 525mm x 345mm): 3 binder’s blanks, 123 leaves (half-title, blank, title, blank, 2pp. dedication, 2pp. description preceding each plate), 3 binder’s blanks. With 120 stipple-engraved plates after Redouté printed in color à la poupée and finished by hand.
Bound in modern calf, with the old covers inset within a panel. On the spine, seven panels. Title gilt to black morocco in the second, author gilt to black morocco in the fifth. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt.
A little splayed, with the spine-labels coming up at the edges. Lacking the half-title and title for the second volume (as usual when bound together), as well the index leaf and errata leaf. Some shaving of the imprint and attribution on the plates, as well as occasional chipping. Blue ink-stamp of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society (“M. H. S.”) to the lower fore-corner of each plate. Bookplate of the Stickney Fund of the M.H.S. to the front paste-down, the date completed in manuscript as 1869.
Étienne Pierre Ventenat (1757–1808) was the first to describe the botanical glories of the gardens at Malmaison, the chateau in (what was then just west of) Paris purchased by Joséphine de Beauharnais, Empress of the French, while her husband Napoleon was in Egypt. Malmaison was home to great rarities in its orangery, greenhouses and gardens, and was a vital scientific hub for the study of exotic plants (including 24 from Australia). Ventenat along with Aimé Bonpland — who botanized with Alexander von Humboldt in the New World and sent hundreds of specimens back — published the descriptions of the plants that were illustrated by the Belgian “Raphael of flowers,” Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840).
The 120 stipple-engraved plates were colored at the press 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 chromatic intentions.) Stafleu in Hunt’s Redoutéana describes the Malmaison as “among the most important monuments of botanical illustration ever to be published,” as much because of the rarity of the species depicts as the veracity and immediacy of Redouté’s images.
The Massachusetts Horticultural Society is the oldest such organization in the United States. The 2002 sale of their library raised in excess of $5M, which reinvigorated the Society, now re-branded as “Mass Hort.” The present volume was acquired at Grogan Auctions in Boston in 2010.
Dunthorne 252; Hunt, Redoutéana 12; Nissen, BBI 2049; Pritzel 9734; Sitwell, Great Flower Books 147; Stafleu-Cowan 16.007.
Item #JLR0715
Price: $90,000