Title

"Arbres et Arbuste"

By Pierre-Joseph Redouté and Pancrace Bessa

Biography of the Artists.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1799 – 1819)

Born in Saint-Hubert in 1759, Pierre-Joseph Redouté was a Belgian artist and botanist. He began his career as interior decorator and painter of cathedrals of Northern Europe pieces. In 1782 Redouté joined his elder brother - Antoine Ferdinand, an interior decorator and scenery designer - in Paris. There he was discovered by the botanist C. L. L’Héritier de Brutelle, who trained him as a botanical artist and employed him to illustrate his publications. L’Héritier also introduced Redouté to the French court and help him to be appointed as official painter of the Queen’s Cabinet. Some years later Redouté also become the official Artist of the Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. During Josephine patronage Redouté produced his most celebrated plates illustrating many exotic plants for the greatest French botanical works of his period: the “Jardin de Malmaison” (1803-1805), a large format collection of 120 plates , followed by “Les Lilacees” (1802-1816) a monumental work with 486 plates on the lilac flower; “Traité des Arbres et Arbustes”(1799-1819).  Redouté based these works on the rare and extensive specimens of the garden of he château Malmaison in Rueil,  following Josephine’s wish to document every plant scientifically.

The famous "Les Roses" printed in a deluxe folio edition, was dedicated to Redouté’s new patroness, the Duchesse de Berry.

Redouté is considered the greatest of all painters of the golden era of botanical illustrations. He was nicknamed “The Raphael of flowers” for his exquisite softness and luminosity  and three-dimensionality of the subjects.

Redouté used various techniques to produce magnificent works. During a visit to London, arranged by L'Héritier in 1787, Redouté met Francesco Bartolozzi, who introduced him to the concept of stipple-engraving. This new technique used dots and lines rather than just lines to build the graduations of tone and compared to line engraving produced a more delicate and realistic result. Bartolozzi also introduced Redouté to the process of single-plate colour printing, a method that made it possible to add multiple colours to the plate and print it just once. Redouté expanded these techniques further inventing in 1796 his own trademark stipple engraving methods of color printing with stipple engravings à la poupée, with final touches for vibrancy using light graduations of color with occasional strokes of stronger body color in paintings.

With this technique Redouté produced some of the finest colored botanical illustrations ever published.

In the preface of is work “Choix des Plus Belles Fleurs” Redouté wrote “…and illustrations of the plant kingdom, captivating the eye of the amateur who is a complete stranger to natural sciences, guiding him from admiration of their portrayal to contemplation of the plants themselves, from love of art to study of nature – how greatly these masterpieces increased the numbers of lovers of botany!”.

Pancrace Bessa (1772 – 1846)

Bessa was born in the Marais district of Paris in 1772 and was a French natural history artist, best known for his botanical illustrations. Pancrace Bessa studied at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris (commonly known as the Jardin des Plantes) and was briefly a pupil of the engraver and botanical illustrator Gerard van Spaendonck. He was most influenced by the work of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, with whom he also studied. Bessa probably accompanied Redouté as part of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798, and later collaborated with him on the illustrations for François-André Michaux’s Arbres forestiers de l’Amérique septentrionale, published between 1810 and 1813. Bessa was hired as a peintre des fleurs to portray rare plants for the famous collection of vélins— the paintings on vellum begun in the mid-17th century for Gaston d'Orleans, inherited by Louis XIV and transferred to the Jardin du Roi (renamed the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793). Through the connections he made at the Muséum, Pancrace Bessa illustrated some of the most important botanical publications by the leading French botanists, horticulturists and agriculturists of the day, portraying new species of fruits, flowers and trees from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. Bessa was also a teacher of flower painting, and one of his pupils was also his patroness—the Duchess du Berry, sister-in-law of Charles X.

In 1808 Bessa published his first work under his own name alone; a series of twenty-four stipple engravings entitled Fleurs et Fruits gravés et coloriés sur les peintures aquarelles faites d’après nature. He appears to have enjoyed depicting fruit, and other books he illustrated include Louis-Claude Noisette’s Le jardin fruitier, which first appeared in 1813, and Etienne Michel’s Traité du citronier, published in 1816.

Bessa’s most important commission, however, was for a series of 572 watercolours on vellum to illustrate Jean-Claude-Michel Mordant de Launay’s Herbier général de l’amateur, commissioned by Charles X, King of France and arguably the most significant French flower book of the day. Published in eight volumes, the project was begun in 1816 and the artist worked on the series until 1827.

As highly regarded in his day as both van Spaendonck and Redouté, Bessa was, however, less prolific than either. Nevertheless, his works were in great demand among wealthy French, Royal and foreign collectors; as the contemporary French writer on art Charles Paul Landon noted in 1810, ‘So far as flower and fruit pieces are concerned, there seems to be a strong competition between Redouté and Bessa, being both equally talented, hard-working and successful.’

Description of the work.