* Pierre-Joseph Redouté Saint-Hubert 1759-1840 Paris

Acquired from the artist by Empress Josephine;
Thence by descent to Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, Bavaria;
Thence by descent in the family;
By whom sold, ("Sale of the Library of Eugène de Beauharnais"), Zurich, Braus-Riggenbach and Ulricho Hoepli, May 23 1935, lot 82;
Erhar Weyhe, New York;
Anonymous sale (The Property of a Private Trust"), New York, Sotheby's, November 20 1985, lot 40, to W. Graham Arader;
With W. Graham Arader, New York, from whom purchased by the present owner. 

The present lot and the following four lots belong to Pierre-Joseph Redouté's largest and most ambitious work, Les Liliacées, sold in these rooms on November 20, 1985 (see Provenance below).  Les Liliacées was conceived as a meticulous exercise to accurately render the different members of the Liliaceae family as well as to produce aesthetically beautiful images.  These highly finished drawings were the basis from which engraved plates were made.  The ensuing engravings were then hand colored and assembled into separate editions.  The complete work was composed of 486 plates of different plants published in 80 separate installments from 1802-1826.  While an engraving would have to suffice for the common collector or scientist, the Empress Josephine would ultimately have the original working model (see Provenance below).

Josephine, in fact, had a wild passion for flowers. To satisfy her need to surround herself with the exotic blooms she spent vast amounts of time and money beautifying the gardens at Malmaison, Saint-Cloud, Versailles and Sèvres.  Being employed by the Empress, Redouté had access to these gardens as well as to the botanists and scientists she hired to name and catalogue each new flowering species. While this series was not directly commissioned by her, without her patronage the work surely would  never have come to fruition.  Knowing that a work such as Les Liliacées would greatly please his patron, Redouté presented his original drawings in a bound volume to the Empress.

Four other watercolors from Les Liliacées are offered for sale in Vol. II of this catalogue (lots 284-287).