a copy of the extremely rare *Jardin de la Malmaison*

Among the treasures of the library at the Château d’Aulteribe, assembled by the Marquises de Pierre, is *Le Jardin de La Malmaison*. An exceptional work of botanical , in which Étienne Pierre Ventenat provides a scientific description of the finest plants in Empress Joséphine’s garden at La Malmaison, near Paris.  This collection comprises 120 engraved and watercoloured plates, hand-retouched by Pierre-Joseph Redouté himself. The Empress subscribed to twelve copies for herself and had them widely distributed.

Pierre-Joseph Redouté left his mark on the history of flower painting by producing a body of work that was both popular and scientific. From the King’s Collection to the Museum of Natural History, where he taught, via his service to the Empire, the artist left his mark on the eras he lived through.

Born in 1759 into a family of decorative painters spanning several generations, Redouté trained in Flanders, where he practised for ten years in the genres of decorative art and portraiture. He came to Paris in 1781 and frequented the King’s Garden, where he met Charles-Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle. This magistrate and botanist taught him how to dissect plants and observe them through a magnifying glass. As early as 1784–1785, Redouté began producing drawings for L’Héritier’s *Stirpes novae *. Another pivotal encounter for Redouté was with Gérard Van Spaendonck, a painter from the Netherlands, who was commissioned to paint twenty plants from the Jardin du Roi on vellum each year for the royal collection, whilst also serving as ‘Professor of Flower Painting’ at the Jardin du Roi.

Since 1760, art lovers had also developed a passion for scientific discoveries. Every maritime expedition took on board a scientist and their draughtsman. Species were named, classified and marvelled at. Redouté was thus able to consult, in London, the herbariums brought back from Australia by Joseph Banks during his expedition with James Cook in 1768–1771, and became familiar with the Linnaean system of classifying species.

During the Revolutionary period, Redouté was commissioned to illustrate numerous publications by the scholars Lamarck, La Billardière and Desfontaines. The artist was finally able to exhibit at the Salon, as it was no longer reserved for members of the Academy. Natural history painting was recognised as a genre in its own right, and Redouté was thus able to exhibit large floral compositions in the Dutch tradition, often painted in watercolour on vellum, with a sheet of silver foil on the reverse, which enabled him to achieve unprecedented effects of light.

But it was during the Empire that the artist truly came into his own, right up until Joséphine’s death. She named him her ‘flower painter’ and commissioned him to create *Le Jardin de la Malmaison*. Around two hundred plants bloomed for the first time in France in the Empress’s garden, including the purple magnolia, the tree peony, the hibiscus, the camellia and the dahlia, whilst more than two hundred and fifty species of roses were planted. In this special setting, Redouté also undertook the creation of *Les Liliacées*, published between 1802 and 1816, followed by the plates for *Les Roses*, his best-known and most widely distributed work.

Catherine de Bourgoing et al., *Le Pouvoir des fleurs*, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Paris Musées, 2017.

Charles Léger, *Redouté and His Time*, Galerie Charpentier, 1945.

Madeleine Pinault, *The Painter and Natural History*, Flammarion , 1990.

Claudia Salvi,*Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the Flower Painter*, *La Renaissance du livre*, * *, 1999.