Lambert, Aylmer Bourke | The Mackenzie-Horticultural Society of New York-de Belder-Von Hoffmann copy; one of twenty-five handcolored copies

Lambert, Aylmer Bourke

A Description of the Genus Pinus, Illustrated with Figures, Directions Relative to the Cultivation, and Remarks on the Uses of the Several Species. London: Printed for J. White by T. Bensley, 1803‒1807

Broadsheets (580 x 445 mm). 47 engraved plates mostly after Ferdinand Bauer (one each after Franz Bauer and Georg Dionysius Ehret, three after James Sowerby), 43 fully handcolored, one partly colored, 3 uncolored, pastedown text explanations at foot of pages 96 and 98; some browning and mottling of plates and text, mostly towards the front and not obscuring the brilliant coloring, very occasional offsetting, text leaf A and first plate loose. Contemporary russia by L. Staggemeier, with his ticket, covers elaborately panelled in gilt and blind with various roll-tools including gryphons flanking harps, spine gilt in eight compartments, wide gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges; rebacked with most of original spine preserved, extremities rubbed.

First edition, one of just 25 handcolored copies, with coloring by William Hooker and highly distinguished provenance.

The first significant iconography of conifers, which established Ferdinand Bauer's reputation as perhaps the greatest of all botanical artists. This first volume was issued in three stages: September 1803, October 1806 and December 1807. Copies vary, according to Stafleu & Cowan, and often do not contain the material published in 1806 and 1807. A second volume, in which the Bauers played no role, was issued in 1824. 

In fact, Lambert—a wealthy collector with extensive greenhouses, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Society, and the Linnean Society—included in Genus Pinus some "quite unrelated novelties from his own herbarium. At the time, the genus Pinus was taken to include not merely the pines but also, among others, the larches (Larix), cedars (Cedrus), spruces (Picea), and firs (Abies), species of all of which were covered" (Mabberley).

Bauer's exquisite draughtmanship inspired a poetic appreciation by Sacheverell Sitwell: "What is marvellous in the Genus Pinus is the play of the pine needles, wherein one soon comes to understand how it was that the Chinese literati evolved a whole school of artists who took for their subject nothing of more substance than the movement of bamboos. It is, also, the incredible variety of tasselling in the branches; the diversity of the pine cones; even, the salubrity and pungency of the pinewoods with their therapeutic properties, as in the calm, clean air of the mountains in a hundred different lands, with the noise of the wind among the pine needles, but returning, always, to this incredible skill in their delineation where every individual needle leads its own independent life. … Ferdinand Bauer, and his brother Francis, are almost unique among painters in this capacity to invest a single plant form, or part of one, with prime importance" (Great Flower Books).

Despite all of his later successes, "it was Lambert's A description of the genus Pinus, … which was to make Bauer, and Lambert, famous and to attract the memorable comment from Goethe, 'It is a real joy to look at these plates, for Nature is revealed, Art Concealed'" (Mabberley).

REFERENCE:

Great Flower Books 64; Henrey 920; Lack, The Bauers, Joseph, Franz & Ferdinand: Masters of Botanical Illustration, passim; Mabberley, Ferdinand Bauer: The Nature of Discovery 43‒52; Nissen BBI 1123; Pritzel 5009; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 4145

PROVENANCE:

Kenneth Mackenzie (bookplate; 1934 bequest to) — The Horticultural Society of New York (bookplate, inkstamp on front flyleaf; sold as part of an en bloc purchase to) — Robert de Belder (Sotheby's London, 28 April 1987, lot 199) — Ladislaus von Hoffmann ("An Important Botanical Library," Christie's New York, 4 June 1997, lot 91)