DUHAMEL du MONCEAU, Henri Louis Traité des arbres fruitiers... Nouvelle édition, augmentée d'un grand nombre d'espèces de fruits obtenus des progès de la culture, par A. Poiteau and P.J.F. Turpin... Paris and Strasbourg, F.J. Levrault, [1807-] 1835
6 vols in 7, folio (ca 535 x 350 mm), with two plain plates illustrating pruning and espaliers and 420 stipple-engraved plates printed in colours and finished by hand; one plate with horizontal tear neatly repaired, some margins a bit dustsoiled, a few leaves with a light pink offset from where the original wrappers had been, an exceptionally clean and bright, large, uncut copy bound in calf-backed marbled boards ca 1880, original printed wrappers bound in the seventh volume. £125,000
First edition, an exceptionally clean copy of the most attractive fruit book ever produced. This work represents the apogee of French stipple-engraved colour printing achieved by Redouté and his pupils. This 'new edition' was in fact a completely new work, loosely based on Duhamel du Monceau's Traité des arbres fruitiers, 1768, a work with 180 engraved plates in quarto format. The new edition was prepared by Poiteau, who wrote all of the text, and published it in 72 parts between the years 1807 and 1835. After Turpin's death in 1840 Poiteau took control of the plates and removed Turpin's name from them and reissued the work under his own name as Pomologie francaise.
The work covers almonds, peaches and nectarines, apricots and greengages, plums, citrus fruit, grapes, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, currants, pears (over 100 varieties), apples, hazelnuts, walnuts, figs, and even avocados. The paucity of citrus fruit (9 plates only) is due to the fact that these had been comprehensively dealt with in Poiteau and Risso's Histoire Naturelle des Orangers, 1818, with 109 colour-printed plates.
Antoine Poiteau (1766-1854) and Pierre Jean Francois Turpin (1775-1840) were both outstanding botanical artists in the 'Redouté' style, and utilised the techniques of colour-printing Redouté had devised. This plates were printed by Langlois, the great master of colour printing who supervised much of Redouté's best work. A team of over twenty engravers worked on the plates.
In this copy all the original printed wrappers (front wrappers only, with titles and dates) have been bound into a separate seventh volume.
Dunthorne 192; Nissen BBI 551; Great flower books p 93; Stafleu and Cowan 1548
£125000
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