When Redouté travels to London to work for L’Héritier de Brutelle, he is already a gifted painter — but also a frustrated book artist. He feels that the printing technology of the time is standing in the way of his art.
Redouté’s watercolor (left) showcases the delicacy of his colors and forms. Next to it (right) is a — much coarser — hand-colored copper engraving from Stirpes Novae.
The Prison of the Black Line
While working on L’Héritier’s work Stirpes Novae (New Plant Species), Redouté is shocked to see how Parisian engravers treat his delicate watercolors: they “lock” his soft forms into harsh, black outlines. Classic line engraving is as ill-suited for the anatomy of a rose as a carpenter’s hammer is for watchmaking.
Meeting Francesco Bartolozzi
In London, Redouté repeatedly encounters the work of the Italian artist Francesco Bartolozzi, who is famous in England for his stipple engravings. In this technique, the motifs are not carved into the copperplate using lines, but are instead created by thousands upon thousands of tiny dots.
Bartolozzi generously gives the young Redouté insight into his highly developed craft. The logic behind it is brilliantly simple: the denser the dots are placed, the deeper the shadow appears; the more loosely they are scattered, the more delicate the transition becomes.
Note: I will go into the details of stipple engraving in a separate article.
Redouté as “Director” of the Copperplate
As a painter, Redouté is less interested in the tedious craft of engraving itself. He is fascinated by the “logic of translation.” He wants to understand how to translate a fluid brushstroke into a vibrant pattern of dots.
He brings this knowledge back to Paris. Later, during his major milestones such as “Les Roses,” he employs a team of 18 to 20 engravers. He acts as a kind of director: he does not guide the needle himself, but he provides the vision and controls every detail so that the technique serves the painting—and not the other way around.
Saying Goodbye to the Black Line
The stay in London changes Redouté’s standards forever. Without the inspiration found in London through Bartolozzi, the famous “delicacy” of his later works would not exist. He returned to Paris with the realization that a flower should not be drawn with lines, but modeled with dots. It is this technical advantage that makes his works appear so lifelike and fresh to this day.
In the enlargement (by clicking the image), the individual dots are clearly visible.
Text: Gerhard Groebe | Images: Public domain
