Christoph Jakob Trew | Plantae selectae..., [Nuremberg, 1750-1773]

Christoph Jakob Trew

Plantae Selectae quarum imagines ad exemplaria naturalia Londini in hortus curiosorum. [Nuremberg, 1750-1773]

10 parts (decuriae) in 1 volume, folio (528 x 352 mm.), 10 engraved titles (letters in red, black, and gold), 3 mezzotint portraits of Trew, G.D. Ehret, and J.J. Haid, 100 hand-coloured engraved plates after Ehret by Haid, each with the first word of the caption highlighted in gold, contemporary brown calf rebacked, spine with raised bands in eight compartments, contemporary red morocco label to spine, lacking main title-page,rebacked, repair to upper board

First edition of one of the greatest eighteenth-century botanical colour-plate books, without the very rare supplement by Vogel (published in two decuriae in 1790-1792). The Plantae Selectae is considered by Nissen to be the finest botanical work ever printed in Germany. Trew, physician at Nuremberg and amateur botanist, admired the talent and skill of his younger countryman, Georg Ehret, a gardener and flower painter. This work is their major collaboration, although Ehret did contribute several drawings to Trew's Hortus nitidissimis. Ehret is one of the great painters of flowering plants in the eighteenth century and all 100 plates of the Plantae selectae were painted by him. Trew died in 1769, leaving the last three parts uncompleted. The work was finished by Benedict Christian Vogel, Professor of Botany at the University of Altdorf. The work was conceived as early as 1742 when Trew wrote to Christian Thran in Carlsruhe: "Every year I receive some beautifully painted exotic plants (by Ehret) and have already more than one hundred of them, which with other pieces executed by local artists, should later on, Deo volante, constitute an appendicem to Weinmann’s publication but will, I hope, find a better reception than his". In 1748, agreement was reached that Johann Jacob Haid from Augsburg should provide the engravings, and the first part appeared in 1750. Trew died before the text of the last three decuriae was written and before the illustrations of Decuriae IX and X were printed.

LITERATURE:

Dunthorne 309; Great Flower Books, p. 78; Hunt 539; Nissen BBI 1997; Stafleu TL2 15.131

PROVENANCE:

"E.C. Weymouth" ownership stamp on title