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Humboldt,
Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von & Aimé Jacques Alexandre Bonpland:
Plantes équinoxiales, recueillies au Mexique, dans l’île de Cuba,
dans les provinces de Caracas, de Cumana et de Barcelone, aux Andes de la
Nouvelle-Grenade, de Quito et du Pérou, et sur les bords du Rio-Negro, de
l’Orénoque et de la rivière des Amazones. Plantae aequinoctiales, … Paris, F. Schoell & Tubingae [Tübingen], J.G. Cotta, [1805-] 1808, volume 1 (of 2): pp. [vii*, titles], v (preface), 1-208, engraved dedication portrait of Don Jose Celestino Mutis, double-page map, 68 plates (plate 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3-29, 30a, 30b, 31-65); [bound with:] - & Louis Claude Richard: Monographie des Melastomes, et autres genres du même ordre, y compris les Rhexies. Paris, F. Schoell, 1823], pp. vi (preface for the 2 parts), pp. 1-106; colour-plate 1-45 (Melastomacées); pp. 1-80; colour-plate 1-30 (Rhexia); large folio (390 x 545 mm; outer dimensions 100 x 420 x 560 mm; weight 15,4 kg), later buckram with gilt decoration (spine-ends neatly restored). Occasional foxing and light marginal waterstains in lower corners of the first work and (erased) tiny library stamps. Cancelled library book-plate. A well preserved large paper copy of these rare works. € 13.000
Two parts of the
Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804.
This massive work was published in 34 volumes over 25 years, dealing with
natural history, economy, ethnography and archaeology of Central and South
America. The botanical portion comprises six sections in several volumes. Of
the Plantes équinoxiales the 2. volume dealing with Quercus,
etc. not present. With a map of the valley of Mexico (not mentioned in the
bibliographies). The title-page of Monographie des Melastomes
according to Stafleu & Cowan missing. This Schoell-issue as well as the
London edition remained incomplete. Both works are finely illustrated by
Pierre Jean François Turpin and Pierre-Antoine Poiteau and were engraved by
Sellier and Bouquet. The first work with plain illustrations and the second
with splendid stipple-engraved colour-plates finished by hand. Blunt about
the French botanical artists: “Pierre Jean François Turpin (1775-1840) was possibly the greatest
botanical genius of all the French botanical painters of his day. The son of
a poor artisan, he learned the elements of drawing in the art school of his
home town, Vire. At the age of fourteen he joined up in the batallion du
Calvados, and five years later was shipped to San Domingo. Here he had the
good fortune to make the acquaintance of a young botanist named
Pierre-Antoine Poiteau (1766-1854) who fired him with an enthusiam for
natural history and became his lifelong friend. After various vicissitudes,
Turpin met the German naturalist and explorer von Humboldt in New York in
1801, and the following year the two men returned together to France where
they were joined by Poiteau. Turpin and Poiteau collaborated in some of the
most important botanical publications of the early years of the nineteenth
century, notably those of von Humboldt, Bonpland and Kunth. … In all these
productions Turpin was the dominant force. In particular, his drawings of
botanical details have rarely been surpassed. ...”* Pritzel 4332; Dunthorne 143 and 144; Nissen BBI 954; Blunt pp. 180-181; Great flower books p. 51; Stafleu & Cowan 3141-3142; Johnston 729 and 794; Ein Garten Eden53 showing 10 plates in the completed Monographia Melastomacearum. www.meemelink.com · floras |