The Romanticism of Plants
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

We moderns cherish the assumption that legibility and accuracy are extraneous to aesthetic value and – as residual Freudians suspect – might even undermine it. Botanical painting’s cunning reconciliations between canonical specificity and expression escape us. But Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1759-1840) lived when art and science had not yet diverged and documenting the visual world was still an artist’s crucial role. It was the golden age of botany, of French scientific draftsmanship and French flower painting.
Celebrated in his lifetime, Redoute remains the most popular painter in the history of botanical art. A wisely selected, engaging exhibition at the New York Botanical Garden, showcases all his major works, including “Les Roses” and “Les Liliacees” which record plants grown at Empress Josephine’s Chateau Malmaison, a horticultural splendor of vineyards, woodlands, grain fields, gardens, and tropical rarities. Vivid context is provided by works of the artist’s mentors and students who, as collaborators or competitors, also produced important books and prints.
Born in Belgium, Redoute and his two brothers learned to paint from their father, a specialist in portraits and decorative works. Confident in his skills, Redoute packed his knapsack at 13 and set out across Belgium and Holland in search of work. He studied wherever he traveled, though his most formative experience was in Amsterdam where the great floras of Jan van Huysum (1682-1749) charged his imagination and shaped his ambition.
At 23, he moved to Paris to design stage scenery with his older brother. There, he met the two men crucial to his future: Gerard van Spaendonck (1746-1822), a virtuoso floral painter and follower of van Huysum; and the botanist Charles-Louis L’Heritier (1746-1800), a wealthy aristocrat and die-hard Linnaean who taught him flower dissection and the protocols of scientific representation. On the cusp of the French Revolution, Redoute was appointed – likely on L’Heritier’s recommendation – draftsman to the Cabinet of Marie-Antoinette.
Redoute managed to hold onto his head during the Terror and, afterward, found a lavish patron in Josephine Bonaparte. Surrounded by horticulturists, she stocked Malmaison with exotic plants from all over the world. (Her gardeners carried dual passports so they could continue to shop across borders during the Napoleonic wars.) Redoute recorded the gardens and their scores of species previously unknown in Europe. Among them were the dahlia, camellia, eucalyptus, catalpa, tulip tree, hibiscus, purple magnolia, Louisiana cypress, yellow rose, and tree peony.
The natural sciences generated great popular excitement in Redoute’s day. Knowledge of the botanical world, of its chemistry and fecundity, was expanding with breathtaking speed. His age was still giddy over the recently observed process of photosynthesis, which sparked understanding of the importance of plants and their leaf structures. (Joseph Priestley jump-started ecology in the 1770s; he was the first to note that without leaves we wouldn’t be here.) New knowledge of plant physiology contributed to Romanticism’s assertion that the universe speaks to man through nature, its utterances as audible in the stamens of a lily as in the song of a skylark. The temper of Redoute’s times found expression in Wordsworth’s address to the daisy: “Methinks that there abides in thee / some concord with humanity.”
Romanticism’s impact on sensibility is evident in the mood of Redoute’s realism. Wildflowers and woodland species – every “unassuming commonplace of nature” – are treated with the same regard as Josephine’s 200 varieties of proud roses. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have approved.) Painted from life, blossoms turn demurely aside or lower their heads in modesty. Compositions become character studies as well as analyses of structure. Redoute is called the Raphael of flower painting but you come closer here to Keats: Gentle turns of the floral axis keep bold frontality from intruding on the melancholy languor of “nectared sweets” grown in gardens where Keats might recognize “weeds of glorious feature.”
Redoute’s luminous watercolor bouquets for Josephine are marvels of animated rigor and First Empire elegance. “Bouquet of Roses and Double-Flowered Anemones” (1813) displays the compound leaf pattern and bud structure of the rose against three anemones in various stages of bloom. The shadow of one pale blossom on another distributes the value scale while it dramatizes the solidity of delicate elements. You can feel the weight of them in the palm of your hand.
An opium poppy turns its face completely away, shunning its own outlaw seed pod. (Frightened of addiction, France forbade opium sales a century earlier.) Elsewhere, a graceful lilac sprig is empearled with dewdrops, a nod to literate audiences sympathetic to Shelley’s Sensitive Plant that wept at winter’s coming. (Redoute sought clients on both sides of the Channel.) An occasional moth or butterfly alights, adding a color note that honors natural pollination routes and simultaneously suggests mutability.
A rare oversized folio opens to one of Redoute’s most splendid stipple engravings: a characteristic Chinese tree peony. Its leaves are spread, within the bounds of botanical possibility, to satisfy the composition and display habits of growth. The riot of petals is unified into a tapestry of brilliant tonal shifts, evidence of Redoute’s sensitivity as a colorist and his mastery of a printing technique that permitted greater transparency and naturalism than traditional line engraving.The folios on view are treasures in themselves. (These are often bought at auction, stripped of their bindings, and the plates sold off singly – an art world variant of commodity arbitrage. Or, if you prefer, vivisection.)
This show is a rare treat for lovers of the genre and a delightful introduction to those new to a vivacious art form that boasts its own history, progression of standards, masterpieces, and subtleties of expression.
Until January 22 at the New York Botanical Garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library (Bronx River Parkway & Fordham Road, 718-817-8874 or 8700).