Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Known as the
‘Raphael of flowers’, Pierre-Joseph Redouté served five queens and empresses of
France, and is considered by many to be the greatest botanical artist known.
Redouté started his career as an itinerant painter at the age of 13, travelling
to the Low Countries where he was influenced by Flemish still lifes. Ten years
later he moved to Paris to join his brother Antoine-Ferdinand as a set designer
at the Theatre Italien, continuing his botanical studies in his spare time.

Redouté became
acquainted with the botanists Charles L’Heritier de Brutelle and Rene
Desfontaines who schooled him in the systems of Carl Linneas, and the
requirements of scientific illustration. L’Heritier was instrumental in his
introduction to the court of Versailles and Marie Antoinette, who later
appointed him peintre du cabinet de la reine.

In 1786 Redouté
travelled to England to execute drawings for L’Hertier’s Sertum
Anglicum working alongside the English artist James Sowerby. During
his visit he met the engraver Francesco Bartolozzi, master of the technique of
stipple engraving. First developed by the engraver to George III William
Ryland, who was hanged for forgery in 1783, stipple engraving was almost
exclusively used in England. The mixed method of etching and engraving allowed
for greater variations in shades and softness produced through dots rather than
lines and would later become Redouté’s signature technique. On his return to
Paris, Redouté continued providing illustrations for L’Hertier as well as
studying under artist to the king at the Jardin du Roi, Gerard van Spaendorck,
soon surpassing his tutor in terms of scientific and aesthetic skill.

Talented and
resourceful Redouté navigated his way through the tumultuous years of the
French Revolution, producing his first solo work for the botanist Augustin de
Candolle’s Plantarum historia (1799), which was also the first to
utilise hand coloured stipple-engraved plates. In that same year, Redouté with
the botanist Etienne Ventenat also produced a work on the garden of botanist
Jacques-Martin Cels. Ventenat’s brother Louis was naturalist and
chaplain to the 1791 expedition to Australia led by Admiral Bruni
Entrecasteaux, and through him Ventenat became employed by the Empress
Josephine to whom he then introduced Redouté. Josephine had an interest in
natural history and experimenting with agricultural improvement, and the vast
greenhouses at Malmaison benefited greatly from her enthusiasm and France’s
explorations. Malmaison became known for its varieties of cultivated plants
particularly roses, her favourite flower. Redouté produced his first work for
Josephine with Vetenet, Le Jardin de la Malmaison (1803-1805),
then again with Vetenet Les Liliacees (1802-1816), and then
with botanist Aime Bonpland, recently returned from five years with Alexander
von Humboldt in the Americas, Description des plantes rares cultivees a
Malmaison et a Navarre (1812-17).

After Josephine’s
death in 1814, Redouté continued to visit the gardens of Malmaisson to focus on
its roses, as well as those found in other grand gardens of France. His efforts
culminated in his most famous work Les Roses in association
with botanist Claude Thory, and issued in parts from 1817-24. Redouté struggled
with funding for Les Roses having lost his most important
patron, and throughout its production he was required to take on other work.
His Album de Redouté 1824, a selection from Les
Liliacees and Les Roses dedicated to the Duchesse de
Berry the daughter in law of Charles X, did however bring him recognition.
Charles X purchased the original water colours of Les Roses, and Redouté
issued a quarto edition 1824-6. Soon Redouté would be under royal patronage,
and again appointed pientre du cabinet de la reine. His love for
his work undiminished, he was still painting when he died unexpectedly at
eighty.

In Les
Roses, Redouté exceled himself in his accuracy and subtle detailing,
capturing the fresh, delicate vibrancy of the live plants from which he worked
(rather than specimens), and his genuine understanding of the engraving
technique itself. His precise, luminous renderings remain timeless, as fresh
and lively as when he first painted them, making Les Roses the
ultimate expression of one of the most gifted artists known to the genre.