Charles-Louis L'Heritier de Brutelle | Cornus, Paris, 1788, one of six copies printed on vellum

Charles-Louis L'Heritier de Brutelle

Cornus. Specimen Botanicum sistens descriptiones et icones specierum Corni minus cognitarum. Paris: Pierre-François Didot, 1788

ONE OF SIX COPIES PRINTED ON VELLUM, large folio (565 x 435mm.), engraved plates in two states (6 plain, 4 hand-coloured), borders and captions of coloured plates heightened in gold, contemporary brown calf rebacked, lacking plates 1 and 6 in hand-coloured state, plain states of plates 1 and 2 dampstained at margins (not affecting illustrations), extremities slightly rubbed

The colouring of the plates was executed by Pierre-Joseph Redouté and his younger brother Henri-Joseph. "A magnificent eighteenth-century monograph on the Dogwoods, with three fine plates by Redouté and three good ones by Freret" (Hunt) was the first of L'Heritier's collaborative efforts with Redouté.

LITERATURE:

Great Flower Books, p. 65; McGill/Hunt 698; Hunt Redouté Catalogue, pp. 100-101; Nissen BBI 1187; Pritzel 5269; van Praet, Vélins du Roi III, 78 (listing copies in Paris and the White Knights sale)

PROVENANCE:

Cardinal Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794), Archbishop of Sens, minister of finance under Louis XVI, sale, Paris, March 1792, lot 59, sold for 224 francs; according to van Praet, this copy went into the library of the Comte Alexis de Golowkin (see his Catalogue des livres, Leipzig, 1798, no. 104); much of his library went to Prince Galitzin