Antoine M. Chazal

Antoine M. Chazal
Flore Pittoresque, ou recueil de fleurs et de fruits peints d’après nature, dédiée aux dames. Paris, Rouen, etc.: by subscription from the author and others: 1818-1825
FIRST EDITION, folio (455 x 298mm.), stipple-engraved title page with gold lettering within a decorative frame of cherubim holding floral garlands and a basket overflowing with flowers, printed in colours and finished by hand, 51 stipple-engraved unnumbered plates (plate 50 replicated) printed in colour and finished by hand, bound in groups of five across ten livraisons, contemporary straight-grained red morocco backed boards with presentation label in red morocco, original green wrappers bound in
A SPLENDID COPY IN A PRESENTATION BINDING OF THIS EXTREMELY RARE FLOWER BOOK. Containing “superb quality” plates (Dunthorne) of various flowers and fruits as well as an exceptional “Tableau des trois couleurs primitive” showing a colour wheel along with an artist’s flowers and brushes and sumptuous and minutely detailed bouquet plates.
Chazal studied under Misbach, Bidauld, and Van Spaendonck, and it was under the latter’s supervision that the present work was produced. He became professor of Iconography at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. As well as portraits, flowers, and fruit, Chazal painted historical and religious subjects and worked with porcelain and enamel. His work certainly rivals Redouté’s in both beauty and quality.
Only three copies are known: one at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University, another was sold at Christie’s London on 22 March 2000 for £133,500 (formerly the Hofbibliothek Donaueschingen copy), and most recently on 26 October 2017 at Sotheby’s New York a copy was sold bound in with Dufour’s L’art de peindre.
The work is unmentioned in all major bibliographies; only the 1825 second edition is noted, which contained twenty additional uncoloured plates, probably intended for the purchaser to practice the art of hand-colouring. The second volume of La France litteraire ou dictionnaire bibliographique des savants (Paris, 1828) describes such a copy. The notion of the book’s purchasers attempting the colouring of flower engravings is supported by the colour wheel plate.
The 1823 advertisement explains that the Flore pittoresque was produced in multiple formats: a deluxe folio with the plate captions printed in gold, a large-paper "grand" quarto, and a regular-paper quarto. Further, the work, issued in eleven parts, could be purchased bound in boards, loose in a portfolio, by the individual part, the tenth part (containing the five "bouquet" plates) only, or by the individual plate. This copy contains the full complement of first edition plates: the engraved title-page and fifty plates (the colour wheel, thirty-four of flowers, ten of fruit, and five bouquet plates).
This copy boasts a wonderful presentation binding, with a label affectionately stating: “Donné par son Grand Père À Mademoiselle Louise Emmanuel De Berthier-Bizy”. LITERATURE: