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The
Story of Napoleon, Josephine's Garden at Malmaison,
Redouté & the Australian Plants
Napoleon and science? Napoleon the
intellectual? Napoleon with his boot pushing a spade? Napoleon the
artistic gardener in his own vegetable patch? Napoleon and
Australia? Josephine and Australia? Josephine a grande dame
of botany. a patron of botanical art? These are concepts seldom
associated. But Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, while searching for the
colour plates of the Australian flora painted by Pierre Joseph
Redouté,
found an unexplored side of Napoleonic France
Reviews
This book is a great
example of a high
quality Australian-produced work and a delight to read, or just to
browse. The author, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, is a former
Australian journalist who has spent many years abroad where she
formed an enduring fascination with conservation through
horticulture. In 1994, she founded Flora-for-Fauna, a charity
devoted to growing garden plants to help Britain's wildlife.
During her time in France, she began
writing on Napoleon's family and discovered the unexpected link
between Napoleon and his great interest in the arts, sciences, and
Australian flora and fauna. She has also made available to English
readers for the first time, information on the role the French
played in describing and promoting our flora and fauna. In Napoleon,
the Empress and the Artist, for example, she has chosen around 90
pictures by the great French botanical artist PJ Redouté
(better known as a painter of roses), the largest number of Redouté
paintings of Australian plants ever included in one book. Her
contention is that while the British collected many plants in
Australia and even grew hundreds of them in glasshouses, they did
nothing to describe and promote these plants. The French, however,
thanks largely to the patronage of Napoleon and his wife Josephine,
produced ten major volumes between 1790 and 1833 in which over 400
Australian plants were described and illustrated.
Reprinted from the
December 2000 issue of Growing Australian, newsletter of the
Australian Plants Society (Victoria).
Reviewed
by Tony Cavanagh
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Napoleon,
the Empress
& the Artist
The
Story of Napoleon, Josephine's Garden at Malmaison,
Redouté & the Australian Plants
Published
by Kangaroo Press, 1998
244 pages, illus., many coloured, bibliography and index.
AUS$68.00
OUT OF PRINT |
