Redoute Watercolor for Les Liliacees, plate 8: "Sea

REDOUTE, Pierre-Joseph (1759-1840).
Watercolor for plate 8: "Sea Lily" Pancratium maritimum.
Watercolor and graphite on vellum.
Prepared for Les Liliacées ca. 1802-1816. Completed: ca. 1802-1816. Signed lower left: "P. J. Redoute".
18 3/4" x 13 1/2" vellum; 29 3/4" x 24 3/8" framed.

Country of Origin: Circummediterranean (Europe, Africa and Asia), extending to the Atlantic Coast of western France. "Jardin de la Malmaison" was sponsored by the Empress Josephine, and its plates depict specimens from her gardens, which Ventenat praised in his dedication as a conjunction of "the rarest plants of the French soil [and] the sweetest souvenir of the conquests of your illustrious consort." While the first quarter of the nineteenth century was dominated by his work on Les Liliacées and Les Roses, Redouté also produced a selection of other original works not necessarily destined for re-creation in published form. Some of these watercolors were additional studies from the Empress Joséphine's gardens at Malmaison. These exhibit the same virtuosity as his studies for Les Liliacées and Les Roses, showing the same hallmarks of a white vellum background and bluegreen leaves that Redouté so favored.Redoute was first brought to Royal patronage by Marie-Antoinette in 1788 when she appointed him Dessinatteur du Cabinet de la Reine and granted him access to the Petit Trianon. From then until the end of his long life Redoute weathered the political storms of France with remarkable ease "he survived the difficult years of the Revolution and the Restoration and found approval with all the rulers who changed in quick succession" (Hinz). However it was ten years later that his most creative period began under the patronage of the Empress Josephine when she acquired the Malmaison Chateau in Rueil, south of Paris: "she was passionately interested in botany and horticulture, and the design and layout of the Malmaison chateau garden became her personal concern. She went to great efforts to collect beautiful and rare plants from all over the world and to cultivate them in her gardens…" (Hinz).Redoute had, as pupils or patrons, five queens and empresses of France, from Marie Antoinette to Josephine's successor, the Empress Marie-Louise. Despite many changes of regime in this turbulent epoch, he worked without interruption, eventually contributing to over fifty books on natural history and archaeology.