Redoute's flowers. (Current and Coming).(Brief Article)

When John James Audubon visited Paris in 1828 he claimed that the highlight of his stay was meeting Pierre Joseph Redoute, whose work he greatly admired. Redoute is a well-known figure in the world of botanical art, so it is surprising that there has never been an exhibition devoted solely to his work in the United States until this year. The Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences in Greenwich, Connecticut, has collaborated with the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, to mount a show that gives this artist his due. Entitled The floral Art of Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1759-1840), it will be on view at the Bruce Museum from July 20 through November 3 and may be seen at the Kimbell Art Museum from November 16 through March 2, 2003.

The exhibition is comprised of more than fifty watercolors on vellum, examples of the innovative prints made after them, two of Redoute's rare oil paintings, and five pieces of Sevres porcelain decorated with painted flowers based on his famous work Les Liliacees. For comparative purposes and to illustrate the evolution of floral painting in Europe, there are several oils and watercolors by Dutch and French artists.

The publication of botanical books flourished in the late sixteenth centuxy, and by 1600 more than 650 titles had appeared. Floral still life emerged as a genre in the Low Countries at about the same time and reached an apogee in the accomplished work of Jan van Huysum just before his death in the mid-eighteenth century. The Dutch painter Gerard van Spaendonck arrived in Paris in 1769 where he was ...