Pierre-Joseph Redouté
| Pierre-Joseph Redouté | |
|---|---|
Portrait by Louis Léopold Boilly
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| Born |
10 July 1759 Saint-Hubert, Austrian Netherlands |
| Died | 19 June 1840 (aged 80) Paris, France |
| Nationality | Belgian |
| Education | Jardin du Roi |
| Known for | Botanical illustration |
| Movement | Flower painting |
| Awards | Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (1825) |
Pierre-Joseph Redouté (10 July 1759 – 19 June 1840), was a painter and botanist from the Southern Netherlands, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at Malmaison. He was nicknamed "the Raphael of flowers" and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time.
He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Redouté 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 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 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. 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.
Redouté was born July 10, 1759, in Saint-Hubert, in the present-day Belgian Province of Luxembourg. Both his father and grandfather were painters, and his elder brother, Antoine Ferdinand, was an interior decorator and scenery designer. He would never gain much in the way of formal education, instead leaving home at the age of 13 to earn his living as an itinerant painter, doing interior decoration, portraits and religious commissions. Eventually, in 1782, he made his way to Paris to join his brother in painting scenery for theaters.
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