Plantarum succulentarum historia. Ou histoire naturelle des plantes grasses. Avec figures dessinées par P. J. Redouté et décrites par A. P. Décandolle
THE FIRST BOOK WHOLLY ILLUSTRATED BY REDOUTÉ
Three volumes. Paris: Pierre Didot l’Ainé, 1799[–1804?]. First edition, unrecorded (?) issue on large paper.
Broadsheet folio (20” x 12 13/16”, 509mm x 325mm).
Vol. I: π1 1-271 27*-27**1 28-481 χ1 [$1 signed]. 52 leaves, pp. [104] (title, blank; 2pp. description to each plate except for the Aloe vulgaris (5pp. description, blank); 2pp. contents). With 48 stipple-engraved plates printed in colors à la poupée.
Vol. II: π1 49-711 71*1 72-751 2751 76-771 77*1 72-851 χ1 86-92 2χ1 93-961 3χ1 [$1 signed]. 55 leaves, pp. [110] (title, blank; 2pp. description to each plate except for the Mesembryanthemum linguiforme (3pp. description, blank), Aloe maculosa (2pp. description, no plate), Euphorbia officinarum (4pp. description), Aloe soccotrina (4pp. description) and Sedum telephium (4pp. description); 2pp. contents). With 48 stipple-engraved plates printed in colors à la poupée.
Vol. III: π1 97-1111 111*1 1121 114-1171 117*1 118-1231 123*1 124-1251 125*1 1261 126*1 127-1281 128*1 129-1371 χ1 137*1 1381 138*1 2-3χ1 [$1 signed]. 53 leaves, pp. [106] (title, blank; 2pp. description to each plate except for the Cactus mammillaris (4pp. description), Sedum acre (4pp. description), Portulaca oleracea (4pp. description), Sempervivum arboreum (4pp. description, 2 plates) Furcrœa gigantea (4pp. description, 2 plates), Mesembryanthemum crystallinum (4pp. description), Cactus coccinellifer (6pp. description, 2 plates) and Cactus opuntia (6pp. description, 4 plates); 2pp. contents). With 48 stipple-engraved plates printed in colors à la poupée.
With 144 plates (apparently complete) in toto, all stipple-engraved and printed in colors à la poupée.
Bound in contemporary half-calf over marbled paper. On the spines, 6 raised bands. Title gilt to red sheep in the second panel. All edges of the text-block sprinkled black; the fore-edges with reserved leaves (i.e., leaves were applied to mask the fore-edges when sprinkled and then removed).
Split at the hinges (the front hinge of vol. II tender), with some loss to the heads and tails; vol. III re-backed with the original back-strip laid down. Worn generally, with some skinning to the marbled paper. Remnants of slips pasted over the publisher to each title-page. Damp-stains to the upper and lower edges of most of vol. I. The first plate of vol. II coming up from its sewing, with some tanning, splits and chips at the edges. Large loss at the upper spine-corner of the vol. III title-leaf, with loss to eight letters. Very light scattered foxing besides; an internally bright example.
Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778–1841) was born in Geneva, where his Huguenot family fled from Provence in the late XVIc. After studying law, a recommendation from Desfontaines allowing entrée to the herbarium of Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle, from which he published the present work on succulents (“plantes grasses” or “fatty plants” in French; “succulentus” in Latin can be rendered “full of juice”). L’Héritier de Brutelle had given the twenty-five-year-old Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), the Belgian-born “Raphael of Flowers,” his first job illustrating plants for publication in the Stirpes novæ (1784–1789). The present work is the first to be fully illustrated by Redouté(s; two of the plates (those opposite text leaves 55 and 60) are signed by Henri Joseph Redouté, Pierre Joseph’s younger brother, as painter). The succulents are particularly notable in European gardens as so many come from Africa (especially the aloes) and the Americas (the cacti).
Dunthorne (Flower and Fruit Prints, sub loc.) calls the Plantes grasses “a most important work, and from the print point of view of technique and of pure colour printing, Redouté’s masterpiece.” He refers to the stipple-engraving and coloring of the plates at the press à la poupée — i.e., such that the individual colors of ink are applied directly to the plate using a small cloth bundle (a “poupée” is a rag-doll; modern practitioners use cotton ear-swabs) — that Redouté had learned from Bartolozzi during his time in London with L’Héritier de Brutelle making the Sertum Anglicum. Redouté would go on to be the greatest practitioner of the method.
Stafleu-Cowan (Taxonomic Description, sub loc.) describes the Plantes grasses as “one of the nightmares of botanical bibliography,” in part because they do not distinguish between the commoner Dugour et Durand issue and this rare Didot issue (cf. the de Belder set (Sotheby’s London 27-28 April 1987, lot 58 albeit in 2 voll.), also complete with 144 plates published by Didot). The two are quite distinct textually. Issued, like most works of the period, in fascicles over many years — the first in January of 1799 according to Stafleu-Cowan (despite the 1798 title-page in the Dugour et Durand issue), the twenty-eighth in 1805 — the work suffered from quarrels between Candolle and Dugour and Durand. Consquently the projected work, running to 32 fascicles with more than 180 plates, has never been finished (fascicles 29-31 were published in quarto 1832; the 32nd fascicle remains unpublished).
The present work is therefore a seemingly unrecorded variant — also large-paper (cf. the Hunt set, which is 51cm); Stafleu-Cowan notes a print-run of 100 copies) — published by Didot with uniform title-pages of 1799, and complete per the contents, which in vol. III ends with “fin du tome troisieme et dernier.”[1] Presumably Candolle (and Redouté) saw the impending problems with Dugour and Durand and wanted to issue a finished work via Pierre Didot l’aîné.
Purchased at Sotheby’s New York 12 December 1995, lot 221.
(All Dugour et Durand): Dunthorne 241; Hunt, Redoutéana; Nissen, BBI 321; Pritzel 1463, Stafleu-Cowan 983.
[1] Notwithstanding the final count, there are discrepancies between the list of contents and the titles of the plates.
Item #JLR0721
Price: $45,000