REDOUTÉ, Pierre-Joseph

(b. 1759 Saint-Hubert, d. 1840 Paris)

French painter and botanist, born in Flanders (Luxembourg) to a family of artists, both his father and grandfather were painters. He left home at the age of 13 to earn his living as an itinerant painter, doing interior decoration, portraits and religious commissions. Enthusiastically, he became an heir to the tradition of the Flemish and Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem.

In 1782, he moved to Paris and pursued an artistic career. He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. He was the official flower painter to Napoleon’s empresses Josephine and Marie Louise, and Queen Marie Amelie. He survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants. He also created black and white botanical illustrations for scientific treatises.

Redouté lived a lavish lifestyle, and died in debt.

Acacia Armata

This watercolour was produced for the Description Des Plantes Rares Cultiv�es à Malmaison et à Navarre (Paris 1812-17, text by Aim�-Jacques A. Bonpland), an illustrated catalogue of exotic and rare plants grown in the gardens at Empress Josephine’s Châteaux at Malmaison and Navarre. It is signed and dated lower left P. J. Redout� 1813. and inscribed at bottom Acacia Armata.

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Rosa Bifera Macrocarpa

The strangeness of the natural world had a particularly strong appeal at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was emphasized in many plant books and animal books. However, it was always necessary to make these works convincing through a display of scientific accuracy. An example of this was the classic study of roses by the French naturalist Pierre-Josephy Redout�, in which the precision is matched by a sense of the miraculous.

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