Lot 188: PREVOST - EXCEPTIONAL RARE BOTANY BOOK -  48 COLOR PLATES - Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits. Printed in 1805

Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits. Paris: Chez Vilquin, 1805. Folio (21 x 14 inches). 48 stipple-engraved plates printed in color and finished by hand, by Louis Charles Ruotte (one by Chapponnier) after drawings by Prevost of flowers and fruit. Contemporary Havana sheepskin. First edition, bound from the original parts. One of the earliest examples of stipple-engraving used to create a grainy effect with a series of dots or flecks using a finely-toothed "roulette" or wheel. Jean Louis Prevost was a successful and widely renowned flower painter, respected both for his watercolor and oil paintings and for his engraved works. His paintings were consistently exhibited in the Paris Salon, and his original watercolors served as models for a series of exquisite color plate botanical books. "A work of outstanding importance and interest ... issued for the specific purpose of maintaining the great French tradition for excellence of design and draughtsmanship. Perhaps no other prints are more worthy of carrying on the tradition of Jean Baptiste and van Spaendonck than these fine examples of Prévost. Whether bouquets or sprays of flowers or fruit, they possess a splendour and freshness amounting almost to fragrance, which is largely due to the quality of the colour printing" (Gordon Dunthorne, Flower and Fruit Prints of the 18th and early 19th centuries, p. 33).

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Rare Books

1805

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