Les Roses.

redouté's masterpiece

First edition of the masterpiece of Pierre Joseph Redouté, one of the greatest of all flower artists, who was employed by the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon, as official court artist at her Malmaison estate outside Paris.

During the 1790s Belgian born Redouté (1759-1837) became one of Europe's most popular flower painters. He perfected the colour stipple engraving technique, which he had learned during a stay in London, and first applied it in his illustrations for de Candolle's work Plantes Grasses. Paris was the cultural and scientific centre of Europe during an outstanding period for botanical illustration, and Redouté was heir to the tradition of the Flemish and Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum, and de Heem. He contributed over 2,100 published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many never rendered before.

In 1805 he was appointed court and flower painter to the Empress Josephine. After the monarchy was overthrown he remained in close contact with the Bourbon royal family. From 1817 to 1824 he produced the work that was to become his masterpiece, Les Roses, finely printed by Firmin Didot and issued in thirty parts. Each delivery of the finished colour copperplates was received with a storm of enthusiasm. According to a leaflet issued after the 23rd part in the copy at the Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden one hundred large paper copies were projected but it is probable that far fewer were completed.

The text was written by Thory (1759-1827) who was an ardent botanist with his own collection of roses, and who came to live at an estate neighbouring Redouté's soon after 1814. Their celebration of roses describes many forerunners of today's flowers, and includes details of a number of species and cultivars that have since disappeared. The roses used as specimens for the work were taken from the collections of Thory, the Malmaison gardens, and from other collections around Paris.

Les Roses is the most celebrated and the most reproduced of all flower books. The plates are magnificently and delicately worked, and it has great artistic, botanical and documentary value, both for the species and cultivars still surviving and for those that have disappeared.

First edition; 3 vols, folio (35.5 x 26.5 cm), engraved portrait of Redouté by C.S. Pradier after Gerard, floral wreath frontispiece and 169 stipple-engraved plates printed in colours and finished by hand, by Langlois, Chapuy and others after Redouté, printed by Rémond, early twentieth century monogram bookplates, some spotting and toning of the contents; contemporary red straight-grain morocco, spines gilt in compartments with Neoclassical tools, marbled endpapers, repairs to the corners and ends of spines, boards a little rubbed and scuffed, a very good set.