1845 Stunning Van Houtte Double Folio Color Litho CISSUS DISCOLOR (Rex Begonia)

Description: Stunning 1848 Hand-Printed Stone Chromolithograph from: FLORE DES SERRES ET JARDINS DE L'EUROPE CISSUS DISCOLOR Blume.(Rex Begonia) This lavish lithograph is part of a grouping I'm listing of some of the most dramatic, brilliantly colored, striking, double-fold-out prints ever made in the realm of botanical prints. They are mind-blowingly brilliant, with the colors fairly leaping off the page. The detail work & the composition are powerful, the scale of the larger prints eye-catching. These make wonderful, brilliant wall-art when framed.I find this to be one of the most amazing, lyrical, beautiful of the Van Houtte plates, with its heart-shaped leaves rendered in every possible curling perspective & it's detailed, helical tendrils. Considerable hand water-coloring brings the foliage to life. The Volumes:Flore des Serres et des Jardins de l'Europe (French for Flowers of the Greenhouses and Gardens of Europe) (1845–1888) was one of the finest horticulture journals produced in Europe during the 19th century, spanning 23 volumes and over 2000 colored plates with French, German and English text. Founded by Louis Benoit van Houtte (1810 - 1876) and edited together with Charles Antoine Lemaire and Michael Joseph François Scheidweiler, it was a showcase for lavish hand-finished engravings and lithographs depicting and describing botanical curiosities and treasures from around the world.The work is remarkable for the level of colour-printing craftmanship displayed by the Belgian lithographers Guillaume Severeyns, Louis-Constantin Stroobant, and Pieter De Pannemaker.Stroobant printed many of the illustrations for the first 10 volumes. Most of the plants depicted in Flore des Serres were available for sale in van Houtte's nursery, so that in a sense the journal doubled as a catalogue. The Plates:Lithography was first invented in 1796 in Germany, and came to the United States about 1819. Lithographs were created by drawing an image onto a smooth stone, usually limestone, treated with chemicals, and then printed on paper. “Lithography, as we understand it today, is the art of printing from a perfectly flat stone, on which the pattern is neither raised in relief nor cut in intaglio. The lithographic stone, which is an amorphous limestone, dense in texture whithout being hard, …[and] has a great affinity for fat. … The drawing on the stone is made with the lithographic crayon, consisting of soap, wax and lampblack, … The drawing, when finished, undergoes an operation called technically ‘the preparation.’ It consists in flowing over the face of the stone the gum Arabic solution acidulated with nitric acid. The acid neutralizes the alkali of the soup in the crayon and ink, sets the fat free, and in doing so creates a permanent union of this fat with the stone by forming lime soap, insoluble in water.” (New York Tribune) This print was printed from stone by hand from multiple stones, & often these were finished by hand with additional watercolor.Condition: Appears to be in very good condition for a print this old. Typical age-toning & character for a print this old. Overall looks to me to be a generally clean copy with the typical character for a plate of this age. Folds as issued. Please peruse the detailed photos. These prints are very old & may have minor imperfections expected with age, such as some typical age-toning of the paper, oxidation of the old original watercolors, spots, text-offsetting, artifacts from having been bound into a book, etc. Please examine the photos & details carefully.Text Page(s): This one comes without original text page(s). I've added a scan of a sample cover page from one of the volumes of the series to the listing photos for reference, they're not part of the listing.About this beautiful plant:Cissus discolor (sometimes referred to as Rex Begonia, tho apparently not actually a true begonia) is a species of Cissus (in the Grape family) found in Southeast Asia in China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand at elevations of 600–2000 meters.The 'rex begonia vine' or the tapestry vine as it's sometimes called, is apparently not actual rex begonias, yet the leaves are multi-colored and have an appearance very similar to a rex begonia, hence the common name. It's amazing.Size: 13-1/4" x 9-1/4" approximately.Shipping: Multiple prints combine into one USPS Flat-Rate envelope. If you'd like to combine & need more time to choose, please send a message & we'll do our best to oblige. If you're assessed multiple shipping for one combined package, we'll endeavor to refund any overage asap. Thanks for Visiting!

Price: 59 USD

Location: Great Barrington, Massachusetts

End Time: 2024-09-06T14:52:59.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10.15 USD