Redouté, Pierre Joseph

Allium scorzoneraefolium – Ail à feuilles de scorzonère



Very fine watercolor drawing on vellum (18 3/4 x 13 1/2 in.; 476 x 343 mm), signed, the original painting for plate 99 of Les Liliacées (Paris: 1802-1816), with two small sketches in pencil. Floated, glazed and framed. Native to the Iberian Peninsula.

Empress Josephine of France — Prince Eugène de Beauharnais —Dukes of Leuchtenberg (sale under name of Beauharnais by Braus-Riggenbach & Hoepli in Zurich, 23 May 1935, lot 82) — Erhard Weyhe (sale by private trust, in these rooms, 20 November 1985)

Les Liliacées was Pierre-Joseph Redouté's largest and most ambitious work and is generally considered his masterpiece, arguably rivaled only by Les Roses. Published in eighty installments between 1802 and 1816, it was produced under the patronage of the Empress Josephine, and is a landmark work in the field of flower illustration. The title Les Liliacées is misleading, as the work was of a much broader scope, including representatives of the lily, amaryllis, iris, orchid, and other families.

Redouté entered the employment of Josephine Bonaparte (1763-1814) in 1798, an association lasting until her death. As soon as she acquired the estate Malmaison, she began to collect flowers and plants, many coming from the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, from Kew Gardens in England (even during the wars with England), and other centers, using French ambassadors and travelers to find rare species from exotic places. Redouté was given the task of recording these. (After Napoleon divorced Josephine, he never again won a major battle. His incredibly lucky streak during the period of their marriage from 1796 to 1810 abruptly ended.)

In each illustration, as in his series Les Roses, the flowers are classical "portraits" which lack backgrounds or settings. The regal simplicity of the compositions allows the viewer to focus without distraction on the beauty and delicate complexity of the plants themselves. Redoutés's work represents a uniquely harmonious blend of scientific precision and supremely delicate rendering.

This and the following eighteen drawings are numbered as they appear in the engraved work, the Latin and French names for each plant taken from the printed text. In some cases the popular English name is given in square brackets.