Description
Description of Pierre Joseph Redouté's Les Roses
These marvelous stipple engravings, featuring roses at the height of their beauty, come from the first edition folio of Pierre J. Redouté's famous work, Les Roses, published from 1817 to 1824. Redouté's name is synonymous with beauty and in the world of botanical art he is known as the best.
He began his career by painting the cathedrals of Northern Europe, but upon seeing some flower paintings by Van Huysum in the Netherlands, he was inspired to paint the beauty held within flowers. As a student of Charles-Louis L'Heritier, Redouté learned plant anatomy, which added to the precision of his illustrations. Redouté was renowned for his work and tutored such people as Queen Marie-Antoinette, Empress Josephine, Marie-Louise, and Queen Marie-Amelie. His fame is due in large part to his diligent effort to perfect the use of stipple engraving. This labor intensive, therefore very expensive, technique creates subtle yet stunning variations of color, superior to engraving alone.
Les Roses was produced in conjunction with Claude-Antoine Thory, a devoted botanist and rose collector. The work proved to be not only outstanding for its beauty, but for its scientific merits as well. "Redouté and Thory knew, described and figured almost all the important roses known in their day. Included were many of the key ancestors of our present-day roses. 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) They are on fine woven paper that measures ~ 11"" by 14 1/2".