Stirpes novæ, aut minus cognitæ, quas descriptionibus et iconibus illustravit Carolus-Ludovicus L’Heritier, Dom. De Brutelle, in Aulâ Juvaminum Parisiensi, Regis Consiliarius
THE FIRST BOOK ILLUSTRATED BY REDOUTÉ
THE HOLDEN ARBORETUM COPY
Six fascicles in one volume. Paris: Philippe-Denis Pierres, 1784 [1785–1789]. First edition.
Folio (20 1/8” x 13 7/16”, 511mm x 340mm). 109 leaves, pp. [4] (fascicle 1 title, blank, general title, blank) i ij v vj (to the reader, quotation, fasc. 1 contents, explanation of terms), 1-20; [2] (fasc. 2 title, blank) vij viij (fasc. 2 contents, authors cited), 21-40; [2] (fasc. 3 title, blank) ix x (fasc. 3 contents, authors cited), 41-62; xj-xij (fasc. 4 contents, authors cited) 63-83 [1] 84 [1] 85-102; [2] (fasc. 5 title, blank) xiij-xiv (fasc. 5 contents, authors cites), 103-110 109bis 110bis 111-112 111bis 112bis 113-118 117bis 118bis 119-120 119bis 120bis 121-134; [2] (fasc. 6 title, blank) xv-xvj (fasc. 3 contents, authors cited), 135-184 (pp. 183-184 is the “conspectus fasciculi septimi”). [≈xxiv, 194] With 91 engraved plates (I-LXXXIV plus VIIβ, XXXβ, LIIbis, LIIIbis, LVIbis, LVIIbis and LIXβ), of which 2 (LXXXI and LXXXIV) are folding.
Bound in contemporary half calf over ochre marbled boards (re-backed, with the original backstrip presented with the volume). On the spine, seven raised bands. Author and title gilt to citron morocco in the second panel. All edges of the text-block glazed red.
Re-backed, with the original back-strip and head-bands presented with the volume (conserved in 2019; full report available). Paste-downs skinned. Damp-staining along the upper edge throughout, mostly mild. Six plates (XXIII, XXVI, XXIX, XLII, LIV, LXI) tanned. Fascicle 1 title bound before the general title; without pp. iij-iv (as with all other copies consulted — as issued?), lacking the fascicle 4 title-leaf. Bookseller’s ticket of O Mundo do Livro in Lisbon to the front paste-down, completed in ink no. “65.621.” Bookplate of “The Warren H. Corning Collection Horticultural Classics” to the fasc. 1 title-page. A sheet of botanical notes in ink manuscript in Portuguese laid in.
Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle (1746–1800) was a tax magistrate (at the Cour des Aides (indirect taxes), latinized to “Aula Juvaminium”) who likely cultivated his own botanical passion. As his collection of rare plants grew, he invited the twenty-five-year-old Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), the Belgian-born “Raphael of Flowers,” to provide paintings to go alongside L’Héritier’s Linnaean descriptions. Fifty-four of the ninety-one engravings are after Redouté, making the Stirpes novae (“New shoots”) his entrée into the world of botanical illustration in France, which he dominated for the next fifty years.
The work was issued in six fascicles from March 1785 (despite the 1784 title-page) though 1789; there was an intended seventh fascicle — the present volume has the “conspectus fasciculi septimi” (“notice of the seventh fascicle”) that is often omitted — and proofs for those plates (Redoutéana finds as many as forty) survive in certain examples at the British Museum, the Hunt Botanical Library and the Bibliothèque national de France. Rarely are all components present (e.g., the Hunt copy lacks all fascicle-titles and four plates), and the work clearly evolved at the press; the present example differs in the plates collated in Hunt as follows: pl. XX is captioned “Urtica arborea” rather than “Parietaria arborea,” pl. XLV is after Redouté and not Fréret, pl. LXIII is captioned “Sida arborea” rather than “Sida arboreum,” pl. LXXIII is captioned “Stuartia Malacodendron” rather than “Stewartia Malacodendron,” pl. LXXIV is captioned “Stuartia pentagyna” rather than “Stewartia pentagyna.”
O Mundo do Livro is a bookshop in Lisbon that was founded in 1945 by João Rodrigues Pires; given the hand of the botanical notes laid in, the book was likely in Portugal from the XIXc. Warren Holmes Corning (1902–1975) was a major patron of the Holden Arboretum — now under the umbrella of the Holden Forests and Gardens with the Cleveland Botanical Garden — and established its rare book collection, donating anonymously the funds for the building now named in his honor. The volume was sold in the Holden Arboretum sale at Christie’s New York 4 December 2018, lot 29.
Brunet III.1043; Cleveland Collections 555; Dunthorne 246; Hunt 673; Hunt, Redoutéana 1; Nissen, BBI 1190; Pritzel 5268; Sitwell, Great Flower Books p. 64; Stafleu-Cowan 4484.
Item #JLR0720
Price: $28,000