Pierre-Joseph Redouté

A color plate of flowers by Pierre-Joseph Redouté.

• Pierre-Joseph Redouté (Belgian).
• Fritillaria Imperialis.
• Paris: Chez L’Auteur, 1802-16.
• Plate number 131.
• Stipple engraving printed in color, and finished by hand, after Redouté by de Gouy, bearing the artist’s name, lower left.
• This work is presented matted.

"The highest peak of Redouté's artistic and botanical achievement... Among the most important monuments of botanical illustration ever to be published." (Frans A. Stafleu, "Redoute - peintre de fleurs" in A Catalogue of Redouteana).

Redouté was at the height of his powers during the publication of Les Liliacees. It is easily the equal in accomplishment of its more popular successor, Les Roses. The work is broader than its title implies, including as it does petaloid monocotyledons in general belonging, for example to Commelinaceae, Bromeliaceae, Liliacea. At this time, he had as patron and sponsor Josephine Bonaparte, who, on acquiring Malmaison and establishing a superb garden of rare plants there, required an artist of outstanding talent to record them.