Tussac's Flore Des Antilles - THE BOTFIELD SET of the FIRST GREAT

Tussac's Caribbean Flora | THE BOTFIELD SET of the FIRST GREAT FLORA OF THE WEST INDIES TUSSAC, François Richard de (1751–1837). Flore des Antilles, ou histoire générale botanique, rurale et économique des végétaux indigènes des Antilles, et des exotiques qu'on est parvenu a y naturaliser; décrites d'après nature, selon le système sexuel de Linné et la méthode naturelle de Jussieu; avec planches dessinées, gravées et coloriées. Présentée et dédiée a S. M. l'Impératrice et Reine; par F. R. de Tussac, colon de Saint-Domingue./ Flora Antillarum, seu historia generalis botanica, ruralis, œconomica vegetabilium in Antillis indigenorum, et exoticorum indigenis cultura adscriptorum; secundum systema sexuale Linnæi, et methodum naturalem Jussiæi in loco natali elaborata, iconibus accuratissime delineatis et coloratis illustrata; auctor F. R. de Tussac, Hispaniolæ colono. Paris: the author, (voll. I-IV), Schoell (vol. I) and d’Hautel (vol. II), 1808–1818–1824–1827 (1828). First edition. Here is what AI says it’s worth: $129,000. Cost: Sotheby’s New York 18 December 2019, lot 203 - $52,500. Four volumes in two. Folio (20 ¼” x 13 1/8”, 513mm x 333mm). Vol. I–II: binder’s blank, π-2π1 1-162 172(–172) 182 19-372 381 39-512; π1 12 2-62 71 8-122 131 14-282 291 30-322, binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 164 leaves: 102 in vol. I, pp. [4] (French title, blank, Latin title, blank), 1 2-66 69-188 [1] 2188 189-198, [2] (list of plates, errata) [=iv, 198, ii]; 62 in vol. II, pp. [2] (title, blank) 1-3 (2pp. dedication to Louis XVIII, text) 4-110 211 212-221, [1] (list of plates) [=ii, 121, i]. With 65 stipple-engraved plates printed in color à la poupée and hand-finished: 31 in vol. I (numbered 1-25 25 26-27 [1] 29-30) and 34 in vol. II (numbered 1-24 [10]), of which 4 are double-page. Vol. III–IV: binder’s blank, π1 1-142 151 16-172 181 19-212 221 23-322; π1 1-302 312(–312 (blank?)), binder’s blank [$1 signed]. 124 leaves: 62 in vol. III, pp. [2] (title, blank) 1 2-121, blank; 62 in vol. IV, pp. [2] (title, blank) 1 2-121, [1] (list of plates). With 75 stipple-engraved plates printed in color à la poupée and hand-finished: 37 in vol. ΙΙΙ (numbered 1-13 [6] 20-24 [1] 26-37) and 38 in vol. IV (numbered 1 3 3-4 6 9 5 7 8 10-38). With 140 stipple-engraved plates in toto, of which 4 are double-page, printed in color à la poupée and hand-finished. Bound in contemporary green morocco (by J. Wright[1]) with wide gilt-roll borders of flowers and fruits. On the spines, 5 raised bands. Author and title gilt to the second panel, number gilt to the third, imprint to the tail. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards, continuing onto the turn-ins. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block gilt. A little scuffed. Foxed (generally mildly) throughout, with even tanning to quires 8-20 and 31 of vol. IV. A few plates shaved. Lacking the French and Latin half-titles to all four volumes, and the Latin titles for voll. II-IV, as well as the single-leaf dedication and text leaf 172 in vol. I (pp. 67-68). Plates mis-bound in vol. IV, but all present (albeit collated a little different to Stafleu-Cowan). A stately set. François Richard, chevalier de Tussac (1751–1837) was born in Poitou and and emigrated in 1786 to Martinique, where his family had property. He botanized there as well as more broadly in the French colonies in the Caribbean (the Antilles, viz. Sainte-Domingue (the western edge of Hispaniola, modern Haiti) as well as Jamaica and Cuba. In Jamaica, en route home to France in 1802, Tussac’s drawings for the present work were burnt in the course of Toussaint Louverture’s colonial revolution in Haiti. The gap was filled by Pierre-Antoine Poiteau (1766–1854) and Pierre Jean François Turpin (1775–1840), who were botanizing in Haiti at the same time. Poiteau, a protégé of Redouté’s (as well as of his teacher, van Spaendonck), worked the gardens of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (MNHN) in Paris before being dispatched first to Bergerac — an unsuccessful attempt to set up a garden and botanical school — and then to Santo Domingo and Haiti, where he met and trained Turpin. Their drawings (146 of which were purchased by Arader), as well as those of Redouté (10, not numbered), Prêtre and others, illustrate this first major flora of the West Indies. Issued in 32 fascicles (each volume in 8, although the disposition of material among them is unknown to Stafleu-Cowan) from February 1808 through June 1828, the Flore des Antilles describes and illustrates some of the most commercially important plants in history: cotton, sugarcane, coffee, cocoa, banana, sweet potato, cassava/manioc/yuca etc. As France’s colonial holdings were evaporating, these cash-crops became crucial to French commercial interests. Brunet asserts that only 150 copies of the work were printed. Beriah Botfield (1807–1863) was educated at Harrow and Christ Church before being returned as a Member of Parliament for Ludlow. He was a committed naturalist and bibliographer, even going so far as to set up a private press at Norton Hall, his family seat. His library was sold by Christie’s London 30 March 1994, the present item lot 90. The set was offered again at Christie’s New York 6 December 2013, lot 188, and finally at Sotheby’s New York 18 December 2019, lot 203. Brunet V.987; Dunthorne 312; Hunt, Redoutéana 34; Nissen, BBI 2017; Sitwell, Great Flower Books p. 78; Stafleu-Cowan 15.397. [1] Per the auction descriptions; I cannot find a mark.

Stima:€89,240.4

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