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WITH 65 COLOUR-PRINTED REDOUTÉ PLATES, FINISHED BY HAND
ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques, and Pierre Joseph REDOUTÉ. La Botanique.
Paris, Baudouin brothers, 1822. Imperial 4to (36 x 27 cm). With a stipple-engraved "Roussœa Simplex" (alluding to the author's name) used as a vignette on the title-page and 65 stipple-engraved plates printed in colour (inked à la poupée) and finished by hand. Later nineteenth-century half brown sheepskin, papier coulé sides, marbled endpapers. With tissue guard leaves.
| Orders and Information | € 5750 |
Rare second edition, printed from the original plates of the 1805 first edition, of Redouté's beautifully illustrated publication of letters on botany by the great philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), written in the years 1771 to 1773 and apparently first published in 1782. The plates show flowers, fruits bulbs, leaves, etc. of flowering plants and trees, some showing whole plants and others showing details, sometimes cut away to reveal anatomical details (including a cut-away tree trunk). The book serves largely as a vehicle to display the botanical art of Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) who executed all the paintings or watercolour drawings, which were engraved by Louis Bouquet, De Gouy, Tassaert, Miss Delelo, Jacques Chailly, Jean Marchand, Louis and/or George Gabriel and Masson. They were stipple-engraved and (except for that used as a title-vignette) printed in colour à la poupée and finished by hand. The plates were printed by Langlois.
Although Rousseau's letters had been published earlier, they first appeared with Redouté's illustrations in 1805, in both a folio and a quarto issue, the latter reissued in 1821. The present is a new edition, beautifully printed by Alexandre Baudouin and his brother on heavy unwatermarked wove paper using types in the latest Didot fashion.
The text leaves are slightly foxed throughout, but the plates show only occasional light foxing. Otherwise in very good condition, with only a browned patch in the gutter margin of one plate, not approaching the image. The plate numbers in the first 7 plates have been shaved or trimmed off. Binding scuffed but structurally very good. A lovely display of Redouté's botanical art matched to the botanical writings of the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau.
