Lot 51
  • 51

Redouté, Pierre Joseph

Estimate
100,000 - 150,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Album de Redouté. Paris: Bossange, [1824]
  • paper, ink, leather
Letterpress dedication leaf to the Duchesse de Berry from the publisher, stipple-engraved title-page after Redouté by Charlin, adapted from Les Roses, printed in color and finished by hand with title text printed in gold within a wreath of roses. Illustration: 24 stipple-engraved plates printed in color and finished by hand after Redouté by De Gouy, Langlois, Bessin, Charlin, Coutin, Talbeaux, Chapui, Tassaert, and Allais. 

Broadsheets (21 1/8 x 14 in.; 536 x 356 mm). Binding: Publisher's printed yellow boards, front cover repeating the title-page wreath and with vignette arms of the dedicatee on an overslip. Half green morocco folding-case. Provenance: Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, Duchesse de Berry (armorial bookplate on front pastedown, the lower portion reading Bibliothèque de Rosny effaced) — Christie's London, 4 June 2001, lot 41 (designated "The Property of a Nobleman").



Dedication leaf spotted and dampstained at lower left corner, one plate a bit frayed at fore-edge margin, some marginal browning and soiling. Covers soiled and worn with minor loss, spine chipped with loss.

Literature

Dunthorne 237; Great Flower Books, p. 128; Hunt, Redoutéana 38 (but not in the Hunt Collection); Lawalrèe & Stearn 33; Madol & Stearn 26; Nissen 1589. Not in Pritzel or Stafleu & Cowan

Condition

Dedication leaf spotted and dampstained at lower left corner, one plate a bit frayed at fore-edge margin, some marginal browning and soiling. Covers soiled and worn with minor loss, spine chipped with loss.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Catalogue Note

First edition of Redouté's scarcest work, preserved in the publisher's boards and with the bookplate of the dedicatee, the Duchesse de Berry.

The Album was conceived by the Parisian publisher Bossange as a synthesis of Redouté's genius. A selection of the finest plates was made from the artist's previous publications: Les Roses, Les Liliacées, Plantes grasses, and Jardain de la Malmaison. Each copy of the Album is unique; as Madol and Steran's "Redouté Bibliography" states, "Complete copies of this book are found with varying numbers of plates, from 24–30, nor are the plates themselves always the same." The Allen copy contains 24 engravings, composed of four plates from Les Roses (Rosa centifolia, Rosa Gallica Aurelianensis, Rosa Multiflora carnea, Rosa Clynophylla), thirteen from Les Liliacées (Iris Xyphioides, Iris Momieri, Iris pallida, Lilium Superbum, Lilium Candidum, Lilium Martagon, Lilium Penduliflorum, Amaryllis Formosissima, Pancratium Speciosum, Hemerocallis Caerulea, Amaryllis brasiliensis, Polianthes Tuberosa, Amaryllis Curvifolia), two from Plantes grasses (Crinum Erubescens, Methonica Superba), and five from Jardain de la Malmaison (Tulipa Gesneriana, var. Dracontia, Gladiolus Carneus, Harcissus Tazetta, Cyrtanthus Vittatus, Dianella Caerulea). The plates in the Album are not simply reprinted from the earlier publications, however. The plates have all been reworked, and in many instances, bulbs and anatomical details have been "stopped out," creating an entirely new aesthetic of botanical portraiture.

Album de Redouté is known to collectors almost exclusively through the 1954 facsimile edition by Sacheverall Sitwell and Roger Madol. Only two other copies are recorded in the Anglo-American auction records since a copy from the estate of the Rt. Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain was sold at Sotheby’s London in 1946, and such watershed sales of botanical books as the libraries of Arpad Plesch, Robert de Belder, and Ladislaus von Hoffmann all lacked the Album.

In 1822, Redouté was appointed Maître du dessin au Muséum d'histoire naturelle. He shortly began a regular program of lectures on the theory and practice of flower painting, which attracted many members of the nobility as his students, including Queen Hortense, Lady Adelaïde d'Orléans (King Louis-Philippe's sister), Louise Marie (the future Queen of Belgium), and the dedicatee of the present work, the Duchesse de Berry. It was early in his tenure as "master of drawing" at the natural history museum that Redouté issued this anthology of his work: "Grâce à son enseignement Rédouté était très connu. Il en profita pour mettre en vente un Album de Roudouté, groupant 24 planches reprises de ses grands ouvrages antérieurs et dédicacé à la Duchesse de Berry" (Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Exhibition catalogue, Paris 1982). 

Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, Duchesse de Berry (1798–1870), was the daughter of King Francis I of Naples. She married Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry, in 1816. When he was killed by an assassin in February 1820, his wife was pregnant with a son who would become the disputed and non-proclaimed King of France from August 2 to August 9, 1830. During her early life, Marie-Caroline was a passionate supporter of the arts and built a renowned library at the Château de Rosny-sur-Seine. Her library was dispersed in 1830 when the July Revolution sent her and her son into exile.