Hoola van Nooten, Berthe

Folio (555 x 385mm.), half-title, title, dedication to the Queen of the Netherlands and foreword in French, parallel text in French and English, 40 chromolithographed plates by P. Depannemaeker after Hoola van Nooten, later red half morocco over contemporary light green glazed paper-covered boards, [Great Flower Books, p.60; Landwehr 80; Nissen BBI 93; An Oak Spring Flora, 87; Stafleu TL2 3025]

Third, and improved edition of this magnificent display of spectacular Javanese fruits and flowers, their bright colours ideally suited to the then new technique of chromolithography. “Europeans who beheld these plants for the first time... could not but have been moved to wonder and amazement” (An Oak Spring Flora).

Berthe Hoola van Nooten (1840-1885), a latter-day Maria Sibylla Merian, produced the present work as a heroic response to circumstances which left her on Java, a widow in her early twenties with a family to support and little money, certainly not enough to pay for her family's passage home to Belgium. “Aware of the vogue in Europe for exotic flora, she decided to take advantage of her enforced exile and put to use the skill at flower painting that she had no doubt acquired as a girl. Thus she prepared forty magnificent plates for Fleurs, fruits et feuillages choisis de l'Ile de Java... [van Nooten] was clearly a more than competent artist, for the splendid tropical plants, with their lush foliage, vividly coloured flowers and exotic fruit, have been depicted with great skill” (An Oak Spring Flora).