Works by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté painted flowers from the living plant for botanists and royal patrons, from a yellow amaryllis drawn root to bloom to the pansy and camellia bouquets of his 1827 book of the finest flowers.

Redouté came to Paris in 1782 to paint theatre scenery with his brother. There the botanist L'Héritier taught him to dissect flowers and render each plant's distinguishing features precisely, and Gerard van Spaendonck shaped his watercolour. A yellow amaryllis, drawn on vellum and engraved for Les Liliacées, shows that training: one plant from roots and bulb to arching leaves, with an opened flower and its pistil in pencil beside it.

The 1827 Choix des plus belles fleurs was dedicated to the princesses Louise and Marie d'Orléans. Plates from it show a bouquet of pansies in yellow, white, blue and maroon, camellias, narcissi and pansies with water drops on the petals, and a striped tulip beside a stalk cut short, none with the amaryllis's dissections. In its crown imperial, a stipple engraving, colour-printed and finished by hand, the orange bells hang in a wide ring below a tuft of leaves.

Sources: Wikipedia, Biodiversity Heritage Library, contributed by Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library, Minneapolis Institute of Art. Portrait: Louis-Léopold Boilly.