Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté, was a painter and botanist from the Austrian Netherlands, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at the Château de Malmaison, many of which were published as large coloured stipple engravings. He was nicknamed "the Raphael of flowers" and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time.

Redouté was an official court artist of Marie Antoinette, and continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. He survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants, which remain as fresh in the early 21st century as when first painted. He combined great artistic skills with a pleasing and ingratiating personality which assisted him with his influential patrons. After Queen Marie-Antoinette, his patrons included both of Napoleon's wives - Empress Joséphine and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma - as well as Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, wife of Louis Philippe I, the last king of France.

Redouté collaborated with the greatest botanists of his day and participated in nearly fifty publications depicting both the familiar flowers of the French court and plants from places as distant as Japan, America, South Africa, and Australia. He worked from live plants rather than herbarium specimens, which contributed to his fresh subtle renderings. He was painting during a period in botanical illustration (1798 - 1837) that is noted for the publication of outstanding folio editions with coloured plates. Redouté produced over 2,100 published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many never rendered before. Of the French botanical illustrators employed in the French capital, Redouté is the one who remains in the public consciousness today. He is seen as an important heir to the tradition of the Flemish and Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem.

Painting career
In Paris, Redouté met the botanists Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle and René Desfontaines, who steered him towards botanical illustration, a rapidly growing discipline. L'Héritier became his instructor, teaching him to dissect flowers and portray their specific characteristics with precision. L'Heritier also introduced Redouté to members of the court at Versailles, following which Marie Antoinette became his patron. Redouté eventually received the title of Draughtsman and Painter to the Queen's Cabinet.

Cheveau, a Parisian dealer, brought the young artist to the attention of the botanical artist Gerard van Spaendonck at the Jardin du Roi, which became the Jardin des plantes of the National Museum of Natural History, France in 1793, after the Revolution. Van Spaendonck became another of Redouté's teachers, especially influencing his handling of watercolour.

In 1786, Redouté began to work at the National Museum of Natural History cataloguing the collections of flora and fauna and participating in botanical expeditions. In 1787, he left France to study plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew near London, returning the following year. In 1792 he was employed by the French Academy of Sciences. In 1798, Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, became his patron and, some years later, he became her official artist. In 1809, Redouté taught painting to Princess Adélaïde of Orléans.

Redouté was engaged to paint selected plants from the garden at the Château de Malmaison, Paris. Whilst he was well known for the painting Les Roses, Jardin de la Malmaison has a distinctly Australian connection, as 46 of the 120 plates featured Australian plants, and the majority of these are endemic to Queensland. One of the first Australian plants Empress Joséphine chose for Redouté to illustrate was a common Queensland flowering vine, Hardenbergia violacea (false sarsaparilla), a vine seen in abundance in the Queensland bush. Other Queensland plants illustrated include the Pandorea pandorana (wonga wonga vine), Melaleuca styphelioides (prickly-leaved paperbark), and Hibiscus heterophyllus (native rosella).

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2024