Pierre-Joseph Redouté was one of the most talented botanical artists ever known.
He is also possibly the most popular botanical artist in history. Many people first become interested in botanical art after seeing reproductions of his paintings of roses, lilies and other flowers. He was born in 1759 in what is now Belgium and died in June 1840. Redouté was fortunate to become an artist who was patronized by the kings of France from Louis XVI to Louis-Philippe. His profile also has a unique claim to fame. His status and reputation was enhanced in no small way due to his patronage by two of the premier first ladies of European history - Marie Antoinette and Josephine Bonaparte. |
During his career:
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"I believe I managed to succeed in the triple conjunction of exactitude, composition and colour, the union of which is the only means of bringing vegetal iconography to perfection" |
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you buy just one book about Redoute buy this one - if you can. It's currently out of print - but has been reproduced in a cheaper smaller version in 2020. I've got the BIG one! Key Features are:
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COMHardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: Taschen Multilingual edition First Edition (April 16, 2018) Size: 25 x 34.5 cm Weight: 4.12 kg (Note: there's also a smaller compact version - published in June 2020 - which has fewer pages and less content.) Average Customer Rating (for Extra Large version) out of 5 stars:
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EXTRA LARGE VERSION (2018)
Redoute. Book of Flowers: FP
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COMPACT VERSION (2020)
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Redouté. Book of Flowers (Multilingual Edition)
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1759 - Born July 10, 1759 in St. Hubert, Ardennes, Belgium. Redouté is Belgian (not French), even though he lived for most of his life in France.
He was the second son in his family and was born into a long line of Belgian painters. His father taught him to paint and by the age of 6 young Pierre-Joseph was producing small paintings. Age 13, he left home to earn his living as an artist. He then spent the next 10 years living a precarious life as an itinerant painter. He travelled across Flanders and the Low Countries and studied the paintings of the Flemish Masters when and where he could. In Amsterdam, he came across the flower paintings of both Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750) and Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) who were prominent Dutch 18th century flower painters whose paintings sold for lots of money. Given his previously precarious existence both the flower paintings and their undoubted value doubtless provided a catalyst for the future direction of subject matter for his painting |
1782 - Age 23, he joined his elder brother in Paris to work as a stage-set designer for the new Theatre Italien.
He devoted his time off to a developing interest in painting flowers. He was also given instruction in the technique of colour-printing. He also attended lectures by Gerard van Spaendonck, a Dutch painter and the official Royal Professor of Painting for the French court. He sought rare plants to draw and drew the many unusual plants in the glasshouses of Le Jardin de Roi - The Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants - now known as the Jardin des Plantes. A record - and archive - of all plants brought to the garden was made through drawings and paintings - now known as Collection des Vélins (The Collection of Vellum). Today it contains nearly 7,000 gouaches and watercolors on vellum representing flowers, plants and animals. This is where he met Charles L'Heritier de Brutelle, a noted French aristocrat, biologist and plant collector. L’Héritier was a committed devotee of Linnaeus
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REFERENCE:
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1786 - L'Heritier visited London in 1786 and Redouté went with him to London (Kew) when 6. Here he
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Biodiversity Heritage Library: Sertum Anglicum
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He achieved his success as a painter while working for the French royal court and had a talent for surviving as a painter for those at the top of French Society despite political changes
His institutional affiliation brought him
He was also taught stipple engraving by Gilles Demarteau who was a superior draughtsman and the Royal Engraver or 'Graveur des Dessins du Cabinet du Roi' 1786 - He worked at the Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle (Museum of Natural History). He catalogued the collections of flora and fauna and was also involved in a botanical expedition to Egypt 1792 - He was employed by the French Academy of Sciences. 1790 - He is said to learned and perfected the technique of using colour stipple engraving technique during a stay in London and first applied it in his illustrations for de 1793 - Pierre-Joseph won (with his brother and another artist) a competition held by the Museum of Natural History to select artists for the museum. It was also decided that he would continue the botanical illustrations for the Vélins de Roi. 1798 - The Empress Josephine Bonaparte, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, also became his patron and appointed him to paint the flowers of the garden at the Chateau de Malmaison.
She is thought to have funded the series listed below
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1819 - Redouté's artworks were exhibited at the Louvre.
1822 - He became an art teacher and in later life he was impoverished due to his earlier spending habits when he earned good money. 1828 - John James Audubon (born Jean Rabin in Haiti), the famous ornithological artist visited Redouté in his studio and showed him he first parts of Birds of America. Audubon commented in his journal that Redouté had told him he received as much as 250 guineas for a single painting. 1828 - Charles X agreed to purchases Les Roses for 30,000 francs 1839 - age 80, he began planning a a significant artwork but never realised it. 1840 - Died suddenly age 80 on 19 June 1840, Paris. His grave can be found in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. |
.....the last twenty years of his life are punctuated by disappointments: professional appointments that do not happen, books that sell less well, a clientele already largely satisfied by its successive editions and a taste of the public that evolves. His financial situation became more precarious, especially since the investments he had made in his domain at Fleury had cost him dearly. An indefatigable painter, Pierre-Joseph Redouté died on June 19, 1840 of a cerebral congestion on his work table, certainly famous but poor. |
This section will develop information about the approach and techniques used by Redouté when developing his botanical paintings and engravings.
Redouté's technique, modelled upon that of van Spaendonck, involved "pure water colour, gradated with infinite subtlety and very occasionally touched with body-colour to suggest sheen" Redouté eventually perfected the reproduction of his paintings for publication using stipple engraving, which used dots, rather than lines, to engrave plates, with varying dot density being used to convey tone and shading (Blunt 1967). |
REFERENCE:
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This is probably the classic book about flowers painted by Pierre Joseph Redouté. The book includes Redouté's preface to the original edition plus a 12 page introduction by William Stearn about the life and work of Redouté. Every plate is accompanied by a narrative which traces the origin and history of the plant and discussing its horticulture today. All but 5 of the 144 color plates are reproduced from the original engravings in The British Museum Botany Library's copy of Redouté's Choix des plus belles fleurs prises dans différentes familles du règne végétale et de quelques branches des plus beaux fruits groupée quelquefois et souvent animéee par des insectes et des papillons (Paris, 1827). |
Hardcover: 312 pages
UK Publisher: Herbert Press in association with the British Museum (Natural History) USA Publisher: Prentice-Hall; Date: First edition (1 Sept. 1987) Dimensions: 313 x 228 mm Note that this book is an oversized hardback that is out of print and only available as a used book. The quality of reproduction is good. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BUY THIS BOOK Average Customer Rating out of 5 stars:
Redouté's Fairest Flowers
Redoute's Fairest Flowers
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Collections of images by Pierre Joseph Redouté - in the series he produced - are typically found today either in
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Redouté continues to be one of the most popular botanical artists from the past. It's not impossible to aspire to own an 'original' Redouté so long as you understand that what you can aspire to is an original engraving rather than the actual watercolour.
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ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: Pierre Joseph Redouté. From Les Liliaces. Paris, 1802-16.
Folio, 14 x 21 1/2. Stipple engravings, printed in color, and finished by hand. Les Liliacees were produced at the height of Redouté's career and were inspired by Josephine's garden at the palace at Malmaison (acquired in 1798). The project comprised eight volumes containing 86 plates of lilies, irises, and other monocotyledons REFERENCE:
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The Empress Josephine's copy of Pierre-Joseph Redoute's botanical watercolors for his book ''Les Liliacees,'' (''The Lilies'') was auctioned yesterday at Sotheby's for $5.5 million to W. Graham Arader, a rare-book and print dealer, who organized a syndicate to make the purchase.
The book of 468 watercolors on vellum depicts flowers in the gardens of Malmaison, St.-Cloud, Versailles and Sevres. It was made between 1802 and 1816, and comprises 16 volumes weighing a total of 320 pounds. The sale lasted only three minutes, one of the fastest ever for such an expensive property, and the price achieved was the 10th highest for a work purchased at an art auction house.
New York Times - Redoute Watercolors auctioned to Syndicate (21 November 1985)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Taschen gathered together all of the plates from the eight volumes of engravings of the original watercolours (published between 1802 and 1816) to reproduce them all in this "jumbo" volume. Taschen production qualities are always the highest and this book is as good as you can get if you don't want to pay $5.5 million - and the rest! (see item re auction above) This oversized hardback by Taschen has appreciated in price since publication - such is the love of botanical art lovers around the world. New copies typically now sell for well for in excess of £/$100. Second hand copies cost less and will vary in price relative to condition and who's selling. |
Hardcover: 520 pages
Publisher: Taschen; First Edition edition (March 15, 2001) RECOMMENDED: Average Customer Rating out of 5 stars:
BUY THIS BOOK The Lilies
The Lilies
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After the Revolution, Redouté's post of official artist was transferred to the French Natural History Museum where he prepared illustrations for scientific publications.
This involved developing botanical art for the Empress Josephine as part of her project to develop and document the gardens at Malmaison. Jardin de la Malmaison was
REFERENCE:
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Description des plantes rares cultivees a Malmaison et a Navarre is a Description of rare plants cultivated in Malmaison and Navarre. The book was written by Aimé Bonpland and dedicated to the Empress Josephine. Bonpland was a French explorer and botanist who had travelled to South America (Venezuela, Cuba, New Granada, Peru, Mexico between 1799-1804).
The book comprised 157 pages and 64 coloured plates by Redouté (published in 11 parts). Copies of Description des plantes rares cultivees a Malmaison et a Navarre are very rare and don't come up for auction very often. REFERENCE:
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"The plates in 'Les Roses' have artistic value, botanical and documentary value, both for the species and cultivars still surviving and for those that have disappeared'
(Gisele de la Roche).
Les Roses comprised three volumes of Les Roses and 168 unnumbered folio plates. It was published in 30 instalments over seven years between 1817 and 1824.
These were done at the height of Redouté's career and were published just after he had finished his Les Liliaces. Les Roses achieved even greater fame than the previous series. They are said to be the flower paintings (of any botanical artist) which are most often reproduced. You can see some of his original watercolour paintings of roses on vellum at the Fitzwilliam Museum REFERENCE: DIGITAL ARCHIVE Edition in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C. Les Roses (Redouté) | Wikimedia Commons Les roses | New York Public Library Digital Collections - an excellent reproduction of the illustrations in the book which allows download of the images. Les Roses | Internet Archive - a digital copy of the book which displays the illustrations within the context of the narrative of the book (in French); digitized by the California State library |
"It was discovered by English printers that stipple engravings printed most successfully from plates that had been well used. A number of black impressions were run off to take the sharpness off the plate. Redouté's printers also took some black impressions from plates for both the Liliacées and the Roses. For the interest of connoisseurs Redouté included a set of black plates as a parallel series to the usual color-printed versions in special issues of both books. Significantly, the black impressions are always printed on paper with a strong ochre-yellow tint. … Since black has a much greater force than the delicate colored inks washed with thin watercolor that Redouté normally used, black impressions on reflective white paper would have produced prints with grossly exaggerated tonal contrasts. By using paper devoid of brilliance, he was able to subdue that contrast and produce black prints that enabled the reader to appreciate the purity of his engravers' stipple and roulette technique"
Bridson & Wendel
The 2023 version of this book is published by Taschen
In essence, it's the equivalent, in terms of book-buying, of buying a contemporary cleaned up digital print of the original engravings contained in the original three volumes of "Les Roses". You get the experience of buying the original three volumes without having to pay $200,000 at Sotheby's! |
Hardcover, 14 x 19.5 cm, 0.43 kg, 192 pages
Publisher: Taschen Publication date: 2024 BUY THIS BOOK
Redouté: Roses; the Complete Plates 1817-1824 (Taschen 2024) from Amazon.co.uk
Redouté: Roses; the Complete Plates 1817-1824 (Taschen 2024) from Amazon.com
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Steve Jobs and the Gallery go back a long way. He was a client back in the 90s and the one thing that Graham will always remember most about the man was that he knew what he wanted. And what he wanted at the time was Redoute roses..... Steve loved Redoute roses. He really loved Redoute roses. He loved them so much that in addition to the roses we sold him he wanted us to gather up and buy every original Redoute rose in the known universe.
Memories of Steve Jobs | Graham Arader
The category Pierre-Joseph Redouté, North American Sylva illustrations contains illustrations attributed to Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840) in François André Michaux's The North American Sylva.
Other illustrations in that 3-volume work are attributed to his brother Henri-Joseph Redouté (1766 – 1852) and to his student Pancrace Bessa (1772 – 1846). |
Redoute was described in the portrait frontispiece to the book as the Raphael of the Succulents
There are 187 plates in the copy in the Library at Kew with accompanying text. Where you can see the images or the book online:
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Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, who was originally from Geneva, Switzerland, studied medicine and natural history in Paris. In that city, he became acquainted with some of the leading scientists of the day and chose botany as his principal interest. During his Paris years-1796 to 1808, he participated in the publication of a number of important botanical works, of which the first was Plantarum historia succulentarum. The proposal for this book was made initially by the botanist, Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle (1746-1800) to his close friend, Pierre-Joseph (1759-1840), who was at the time the favorite painter of Queen Marie Antoinette. Redouté was asked to do the plates, and de Candolle was chosen to write the descriptive texts. The result was published in many sections, beginning in 1799 and continuing intermittently, with many difficulties, until 1837. One authority on the publication history of Plantarum historia succulentarum has stated that it is very difficult to know what constitutes a "complete copy" of the book.
Rare Books of Missouri Botanical Garden
A number of Redouté's original paintings are watercolour on vellum. Many are considered to be his greatest works.
However most of the images we see tend to be engravings due to their publication for wider distribution. Redouté originally went to London and Kew in 1786 to learn the art of stipple engraving and color printing which was to provide him him with the technical expertise needed to produce his beautiful botanical illustrations. He later introduced "stipple-engraving" to France. Latterly, he certainly developed to perfection a method of colour application which involved the use of a minute chamois leather or cotton mop for the application of a succession of colours to a copper engaving. In later years, he also learned how to paint using pure watercolour - from a Dutch artist, Gerard van Spaendonck. Most of the images of Redouté's work which can now be seen online via galleries which are
One of the better examples are the Redouté prints by Joel Oppenheimer. I don't buy but I do enjoy looking! |
On the left is my vintage copy of this book. This book was produced in relation to a 1992 exhibition in the USA of the work of artist and one notable feature is it identifies artwork to (some) collections.
It includes: a timeline and essays on:
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Hardback: 104 pages
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publication date (1st edition): 2002 The book was published in association with the Bruce Museum of Arts and Science and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas. BUY IN UK: The Floral Art of Pierre-Joseph Redouté
[object Object]
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Wikimedia Commons: Biodiversity Heritage Library / Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library New York Public Library - Digitized Collections Other reputable online sites
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This book was produced to accompany a survey and exhibition of Redouté works at the Teylers Museum in the Netherlands.
The book is richly illustrated with a wide selection of his sketchbooks, drawings and watercolors. |
Paperback: 167 pages
Publisher: NAI Publishers; Publication date (1st edition): 15 Oct. 2013 |
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