Redouté Choix Pl. 106, Moutan Peony

From the imperial French gardens to your home, this Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition of Redouté Choix Pl. 106, Moutan Peony promises to elevate and refine any space.

Printed with archival pigment on rag watercolor paper, this facsimile print faithfully captures the delicate detail of Redouté’s original stipple engraving. Elevate your environment with a flower from the empress’ garden!

About Choix des plus belles Fleurs

First published in 1827 and subsequently in 1835, Redouté’s Choix des plus belles fleurs et des plus beaux fruits, or Choice of the most beautiful flowers and most beautiful fruits contains 144 plates depicting the most attractive botanicals he had encountered throughout his long-lasting career as a royal flower painter. Many of the plants were rendered from fruits and flowers cultivated within the French imperial gardens and other notable botanical collections.

The plates are printed in color through a method called stipple engraving with the finishing touches of color applied by hand. Stipple engraving is different from line engraving in that the imagery is made up of a series of dots rather than a continuous line. As a result, the print has a soft delineation of form that is particularly well suited to the delicate subject matter. The 1835 edition can be visually distinguished from the 1827 edition through the presence of a plate number after Redouté’s name in the bottom left margin of the print.

The Oppenheimer Kew Gardens Edition of Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s Choix des plus belles Fleurs offers a selection of his most remarkable and sought-after plates from this folio as modern fine art prints in a limited edition of 300. The modern prints are exacting facsimiles of the Redouté folio housed in the library at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

About Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Recognized as the royal designer and painter for three successive French Empresses, Marie-Antoinette, Josephine Bonaparte, and Marie-Amelie, Belgian artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté etched his name into the history of botanical art through his magnificent floral folios. Three of his major works, Les Liliacées, Les Roses, and Choix des plus belles fleurs, were produced under royal patronage and depict plants from the French imperial gardens. His botanical prints, rendered through the innovative technique of stipple engraving, received a fervent welcome and were praised for their soft modulation of form and delicate coloring.

Despite the political tumult that characterizes turn-of-the-century France, from the overthrow of the Bourbon empire, the reign of Napoleon, and the July Revolution of 1830, Redouté continued to methodically produce beautifully serene folios of flowers in stark contrast to his violent historical backdrop. His work was highly respected in his time and continues to be prized today.

About Oppenheimer Editions

Established in 1999, our publishing company Oppenheimer Editions was developed in order to produce modern facsimiles of historic works of art. Marrying cutting-edge digital printing technologies with canonical works of art, Oppenheimer Editions has partnered with prestigious museums to make their holdings accessible to the public as fine art prints. Works from the New-York Historical Society’s unrivaled collections of John James Audubon’s watercolors and the Hudson River School paintings are examples of art that otherwise would be unobtainable.

Among the institutional collections we have partnered with are the American Museum of Natural History, the Field Museum, and the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Our Oppenheimer Editions prints are not mere reproductions. Rather, they are limited-edition fine art prints made with the finest quality archival pigments on rag watercolor paper and executed to exacting standards.

For more information about the Oppenheimer Kew Gardens edition of Redouté Choix Pl. 106, Moutan Peony, email us at [email protected] or check out our articles Plant Mutations in the Botanical Prints of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, The Historical Significance of Botanical Illustration, and The Interrelation between Natural History Art and Porcelain Ornamentation.

more information about botanical printsView All Articles

Birds and Animal Art Botanical Art Information

An Obsession with Natural History and Victorian Collecting Crazes

April 17, 2024

Spanning the majority of the 19th century, the Victorian era was marked by a rise in fashionable collecting hobbies. Natural history objects were among the [...]

Read More

Botanical Art Information

How to Distinguish Between the Various Editions of Besler’s ‘Garden of Eichstätt’

July 29, 2023

A practical guide to understanding and identifying the different editions of Besler’s folio through paper types and material characteristics.

Read More

Botanical Art

Plant Mutations in the Botanical Prints of Pierre-Joseph Redouté

June 22, 2023

A consideration of the artistic rendering of the Tulip Breaking Virus, and the phenomenon of Rose Perfoliation in Redouté's prints

Read More

Botanical Art

Encountering the Amazon through Margaret Mee’s Lens

June 21, 2023

A consideration of Mee's implicit and overt depictions of symbiotic ecosystems in her paintings of the Amazon Rainforest

Read More

Botanical Art

The Historical Allure of Variegated Tulips

June 20, 2023

Visualizing expansion, abundance, and prestige through depictions of "broken" tulips in the art of Basilius Besler, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Dr. Robert Thornton and Robert Furber

Read More

Botanical Art

The Historical Significance of Botanical Illustration

June 16, 2023

A consideration of the motives behind picturing plants including the functional uses and theoretical implications of floral imagery.

Read More