Description

original hand-colour copper engraving. EXTREMELY RARE botanical print from the composite collection of Pierre Joseph Buchoz, Collection précieuse et enluminée des fleurs les plus belles et les plus curieuses qui se cultivent dans les jardins de la Chine que ceux de l’Europe… [et] Première centurie de planches enluminées et non enluminées…., Cent 2, pl. LXXVI (76).

with manuscript text in French “La Grenadille à feuilles découpées à dents de scie, le Murucuja. – Passiflora” [The grenadilla with saw-toothed cut leaves, the murucuja. – Passiflora]
“Grenadille” is an old or poetic term often referring to the passionflower or its fruit (closely related to passionfruit).
“Passiflora” is the scientific genus name of the passionflower.

Pierre-Joseph Buchoz (1731-1807) was a French physician, lawyer, and naturalist. He was highly interested in Chinese culture and followed after Voltaire, introducing ‘Chinoiserie’ to the European audience. He was the first to produce a botanical work following this tradition. The engravings “have the decorative qualities which we have always associated with Far Eastern art.” (Blunt and Stearn). The engravings for Collection précieuse.. were completed by Jean Baptiste Desmoulins, Jean Charles Bacquoy, Jean Victor Dupin, Claude Mathieu Fessard, and others. Many of the botanical engravings are shown with insects, butterflies, or birds. The plants of China, the Far East and Europe were illustrated in Buchoz’s work.
The beautiful images in the work were drawn from flowers cultivated in gardens in China and Europe in the 18th century. Buchoz’s engravings are easily recognized by their strong detail and their visually appealing balanced composition. As stated by art historian Michael Sullivan, these engravings are “remarkable from the technical point of view” for the way in which “the engraver has not merely transmitted the line… but has managed to suggest, with the burin, the tone of Chinese watercolour.” The work “contains figures of the rarest and most remarkable, and most interesting phenomena of the three kingdoms of nature, each part being devoted to one of them.” The images were often after Jacques de Favanne and engraved by C. Baquoy.

Condition

with manuscript title “Passiflora” below the neatline written in pen, with manuscript description on lower margin written in pencil, otherwise excellent condition.