Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté (, 10 July 1759 – 19 June 1840), was a painter and botanist from the Austrian Netherlands, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at the Château de Malmaison, many of which were published as large coloured stipple engravings. He was nicknamed "the Raphael of flowers" and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time.

Redouté was an official court artist of Marie Antoinette, and continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. He survived the turbulent political upheaval to gain international recognition for his precise renderings of plants, which remain as fresh in the early 21st century as when first painted. He combined great artistic skills with a pleasing and ingratiating personality which assisted him with his influential patrons. After Queen Marie-Antoinette, his patrons included both of Napoleon's wives – Empress Joséphine and Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma – as well as Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, wife of Louis Philippe I, the last king of France.

Redouté was engaged to paint selected plants from the garden at the Château de Malmaison, Paris. Whilst he was well known for the painting Les Roses, Jardin de la Malmaison has a distinctly Australian connection, as 46 of the 120 plates featured Australian plants, and the majority of these are endemic to Queensland. One of the first Australian plants Empress Joséphine chose for Redouté to illustrate was a common Queensland flowering vine, Hardenbergia violacea (false sarsaparilla), a vine seen in abundance in the Queensland bush. Other Queensland plants illustrated include the Pandorea pandorana (wonga wonga vine), Melaleuca styphelioides (prickly-leaved paperbark), and Hibiscus heterophyllus (native rosella). He was survived by his wife, Marie-Marte Gobert, whom he married in 1786, and their two daughters. . This is the catalog of the exhibition at the Musée de la vie romantique in Paris, April 28 to October 1, 2017.