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Lot description
Pierre Antoine Poiteau (1766-1854). Turraea rigida. Copper engraving, 1803. Paper, copper engraving. Sheet size: 50 x 31.5 cm. Image size: 28 x 19 cm. Signed "Dessine par Poiteau. Grave par Sellier". Minor dirt, foxings. Approximately 2 cm of the leaf has been cut along the left edge. Plate No. 48 from the edition "Choix de plantes: dont la plupart sont cultivées dans le jardin de Cels". Pierre Antoine Poiteau (1766-1854), engraver - François Noël Sellier (1737-1790). The edition ‘Choix de plantes : dont la plupart sont cultivees dans le jardin de Cels’ is very rare. The artist Pierre-Joseph REDOUTE and the botanist Etienne Pierre VENTENAT had also worked together previously. The first collaboration between Redoute and Ventenat was the commission from Empress Josephine Beauharnais to artistically design her garden with rare plants in Malmaison. The result was the famous ‘Jardin de Malmaison’ (1803-04). The book ‘Choix de plantes dont la plupart sont cultivées dans le jardin de Cels’, which appeared at around the same time, is further evidence of their successful collaboration. Jacques-Philippe-Martin Cels (1740-1806) was a tax collector from 1761 until the Revolution, when he was forced to resign from his post and devote himself to the study of botany under the guidance of Bernard de Jussieu and Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier and under the influence of Rousseau. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Cels had laid out an approximately eighteen-hectare garden, which was first described by Ventenat in his ‘Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues cultivées dans le jardin de J. M. Cels’ (1800-1802) with 100 colour plates by P. J. Redoute. ‘Choix de plantes dont la plupart sont cultivées dans le jardin de Cels‘ is her second book, which captures the beauty of Cels’ famous garden, recognised by his contemporaries as one of the most beautiful in Europe.