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Lot 25
Redoute Original Watercolor for Les Liliacées - Watercolor for plate 133: “Sessile-Wake-Robin” Trillium sessile

REDOUTÉ, Pierre-Joseph (Belgian, 1759-1840).
Watercolor for plate 133: “Sessile-Wake-Robin” Trillium sessile.
Prepared for Les Liliacées.
Watercolor and graphite on vellum.
Signed lower left: "P.J. Redouté".
ca. 1802-1816.
18 1/2" x 13 1/2" vellum.

Trillium sessile, the sessile wake-robin or toadshade, is a woodland wildflower of the family Melanthiaceae (formerly Trilliaceae). Its distinctive three-parted flower, with three mottled leaves called bracts and three narrow, upright, dark maroon petals, sits directly on the whorl of leaves without a stalk (hence “sessile”). The wake-robins are North American and Asian plants with no close relatives in Europe, and their unusual flower structure fascinated early nineteenth-century botanists.

Native to eastern and central North America, from New York and Virginia west to Kansas and Arkansas, and south to northern Alabama. Trillium sessile was introduced to European gardens through the collecting network of André Michaux and through subsequent exchanges organized by the Jardin des Plantes. American wildflowers were novelties in Paris, and the trilliums’s unusual appearance made it a botanical conversation piece.

The trilliums in Les Liliacées represent the publication’s effort to document American woodland plants that were arriving in France in the early years of the nineteenth century. The Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806) was capturing American imaginations, and French naturalists were intensely interested in the flora of the continent that Napoleon had so recently sold to the United States. The plants André Michaux had collected in the eastern forests were the first installment on this botanical treasury.

American plants at Malmaison came largely through the legacy of Michaux’s collections and through Josephine’s direct correspondence with botanical contacts in the United States. Thomas Jefferson’s friendship with French scientists, who he had lived in Paris as ambassador from 1784 to 1789 and maintained scientific correspondence throughout his presidency, facilitated the exchange of American and French plant material, and Josephine benefited from this network.

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The unequalled botanical artist, Pierre-Joseph Redoute, occupies a central position in the development of European flower painting. Redoute had as pupils or patrons five queens and empresses of France, from Marie-Antoinette to Empress Josephine and her successor, Marie-Louise. Despite many changes of regime in a turbulent epoch, he worked without interruption, a testament to his greatness as an artist.

Les Liliacees, Redoute's largest and most ambitious work, is generally considered to be the artist's masterpiece. Produced under the patronage of the Empress Josephine, for whom Redoute worked as botanical artist at her estate at Malmaison, this pristine example represents a landmark work in the field of flower illustration. The title is misleading, for the work covers a much broader scope: the work includes representatives of the lily, amaryllis, iris, orchid, and other families. The plates were executed by means of stipple engraving, which, as noted, was a method that the artist himself perfected when he was unsatisfied with the effects garnered by traditional copper-plate engraving. As he shrewdly observed, the delicacy and subtle elegance of his compositions could only be captured using an equally fine printing method.

Les Liliacees records the plants of the lily family and related flowers that Josephine collected for her gardens at Malmaison. Redoute's small drawings, placed at the bottom of the main illustrations, record the anatomical features of each species so that each flower could be identified with precision and cultivated to perfection. Redoute's work represents a uniquely harmonious blend of scientific precision and supremely delicate artistry.

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