Pierre-Joseph Redoute

Known as
the ‘Raphael of flowers’, Pierre-Joseph Redoute served five queens and
empresses of France, and is considered by many to be the greatest botanical
artist known. Redoute 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.

Redoute
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
Redoute 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 Redoute’s signature technique. On his return to
Paris, Redoute 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 Redoute 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, Redoute 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 Redoute. 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. Redoute 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, Redoute 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 but throughout he struggled with funding and throughout its
production he was required to take on other work. His Album de Redoute 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. Soon Redoute 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.