Description
Description of Risso and Poiteau's Histoire et Culture des Orangers Description
These finely detailed stipple engravings are from the work entitled Histoire et Culture des Orangers, authored by Joseph Risso with engravings based on drawings by the renowned by Pierre Poiteau. The work was published in Paris in 1872. This work is a comprehensive work on citrus fruit, of which Sacheverell Sitwell writes: 'it contains exquisite drawings of every known variety of orange, lemon and grape fruit, and their congeners, fruits that hang from the leaves, alternately like suns or moons, with every kind of rind, and shaped like gourds or pitchers... or again, authentic globes of fire, whether pale, as of moonlight, or red-gold like the sun but half-hidden, as in poetry, in its own green shade. A beautiful and inspiring work, in its way not less so than Redouté's Les Liliacées ... or Les Roses' (Great Flower Books [1990] pp.22-23). Risso was well-known as a naturalist while he worked in Nice, France. His interests reached beyond just botanicals and even has a dolphin named after him. Pierre Poiteau, a celebrated artist, provided the drawings from which these engravings were made. 'After a period plant-collecting in the Caribbean... he returned to Paris in 1800 and, during the next thirty years, illustrated many books, using the skill developed during his travels... As well as illustrating the citrus fruits in the Orangers, Poiteau contributed to the descriptions of the tropical varieties, using knowledge of them gained from his earlier career. No French botanical artist of the period can have escaped the influence of Redouté, and Poiteau was among the group associated with him. These oranges and lemons and their relations, with leaves, flowers, and often cross-sections as well as whole fruits, form one of the most beautiful and complete records of the varieties known in the nineteenth century.' (Oak Spring Pomona p.206). They are on fine paper that measures ~13 7/8" by 10".