[A Group of Six Tulips].
Collection coloriée des plus belles variétés de Tulipes qu'on cultive dans les Jardins des Fleuristes.
Paris, the Author, 1781
The second half of the eighteenth century saw a boom in natural history publications in France fuelled by such works as Buffon's Histoire Naturelle. The accession of Louis XVI in 1774 was followed by a relaxation in the regulation of the book trade making it easier for authors to publish their own works. No other writer was to take such copious advantage of these two developments as Pierre-Joseph Buchoz (1731-1807), a French physician, lawyer and naturalist. His works are characterised by the beauty of the illustrations, and their rarity owing to the small size of the print runs.
The final tulip plate is identified as the legendary broken flame-patterned flower 'Semper Augustus', bulbs of which were recorded as having reached prices of up to 10,000 Guilders at the height of Tulipmania in 1637, although even before this time bulbs of this particular flower had been valued at 5,500 Guilders.
6 hand-coloured engraved plates of tulips, in matching silver leaf frames; dimensions: 34.6cm by 48.5cm.
Cleveland Collections 541 (GC copy this copy); Dunthorne 66 and 65; Great Flower Books, p.52; Hunt 565; Nissen BBI 280 and 279 (calls mistakenly for 60 and 40 plates); Pritzel 1330.
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