DECAISNE, Joseph (1807-1882)

Le Jardin Fruitier du Muséum, ou Iconographie de Toutes les Espèces et Variétés d'Arbres Fruitiers Cultivés dans cet Établissement avec leur description, leur histoire, leur synonymie

Paris: (Firmin Didot), [1858-]1862-1875. 9 volumes. Folio. (12 1/8 x 9 3/8 inches). 508 plates after Alfred Riocreux, engraved by Mlle. Taillant and P. Picart, including 1 uncoloured engraving and 507 lithographs, 497 with fruit subjects printed in colour and finished by hand, 4 of these double-page. Some light foxing.

Finely bound in early 20th-century, French, quarter light brown morocco and marble paper boards, marble endpapers by F. Saulnier

First and only edition of this fine pomology, one of the greatest of all fruit books.

Joseph Decaisne was a distinguished Belgian-born French botanist renowned for his contributions to horticulture, agronomy, and botanical taxonomy. Trained at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, Decaisne became head of the museum's Jardin des Plantes and played a crucial role in advancing the study of plant cultivation, particularly fruit-bearing trees. His expertise in systematic botany and plant physiology led to numerous publications, but the present work remains one of his most significant and visually striking works. Le Jardin Fruitier du Muséum is a monumental treatise on the species and varieties of fruit trees cultivated at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. It serves as both a scientific study and a practical horticultural guide, documenting the morphology, classification, and cultivation of fruit trees in meticulous detail. The work is presented in sections each covering a single species of fruit. The first (and largest) section is on the Pear, or what the author calls the "roi des fruits à pepins." This section, spread over the first six volumes, includes 357 plates. The remaining sections are, in vol.VII and VIII, Peaches (74 plates); Nectarines (13 plates); Plums (12 plates); Apricots (1 plate); and in vol.IX: Strawberries (40 plates, four of which are double-page) and Currants and Gooseberries (11 plates). The plates illustrate individual varieties with their fruit and portions of the foliage. Decaisne provides descriptions of each species, tracing their historical cultivation, geographic distribution, and known synonyms. The numerous plates were by Alfred Riocreux, "the most sensitive and skilful French botanical artist of the period...the Paris counterpart of Walter Hood Fitch" (Blunt). Riocreux's life-size depictions of fruits, branches, and leaves are celebrated for their scientific accuracy and artistic refinement. Bunyard calls the work "magnificent" and writes that it is impossible to speak too highly of the colouring: "the lithographs are magnificent, and no pomological work has approached them for correctness of colouring." The illustrations in Le Jardin Fruitier du Muséum exemplify the golden age of botanical illustration, where the intersection of art and science produced works of both aesthetic beauty and scholarly importance.

E.A. Bunyard, "Guide to the Literature of Pomology" in Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, 1915, p.428; Great Flowers Books (1990) p.89; Nissen BBI 456; Stafleu & Cowan TL2 1338.

Item #42107

Price: $12,500.00