PIERRE-JOSEPH REDOUTÉ

For the first time in France, the Museum of Romantics and the Museum of Natural History are displaying a compendium of his rare watercolours that reveal the subtleness of the finest brushwork of his time. Renowned for his scientific precision at the Jardin du Roi, which became a museum during the Revolution, he continued the tradition of “the king’s velins”, illustrating the collections of naturalists returning from expeditions in Australia, the Americas, and South Africa. At the dawn of the golden age of the natural sciences and major progress in horticulture, fashionable ladies were becoming gardeners, learning botanical nomenclature, building herbariums, and passionately learning the language of flowers. A “Class on Flowers” was created for the silk industry in Lyon, while a “Salon des Fleurs” celebrated a veritable pictorial genre. Redouté was also the painter of queens, as he got his start alongside Marie-Antoinette, did his best work for Joséphine, and ended his career working for Marie-Amélie. He was the head of an important studio, worked with the porcelain factory in Sèvres, and was also an etcher, botanist, gardener, publisher, teacher, and friend to artists. And in counterpoint to the naturalistic representation of flowers in the 19th century, contemporary artists will display the endless vitality of the subject in art and the decorative arts. This presentation will be placed in the permanent collections and is co- organised with the Ateliers d’Art de France.

CURATORS : Catherine de Bourgoing, Garden Historian; Jérôme Farigoule, Director of the Museum of Romantics; Sophie Eloy, Deputy Director of the Museum of Romantics

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