June 2011 – Gotcha Cha Cha

These are so pretty. A pair of prints by the botanical artist J. L. Prevost, 1790-1850. These were of course not made then, but I cannot find out exactly when, but I am going to look for it. You do see these prints every now and then, they are not rare. But here you a have a set, they are framed alike, in the same condition. They have the shabby chic quality, but I also think they can go a lot of different ways, like for people with an interest in 19th century aesthetics.

I stole the following information from the website George Glazer Gallery:

“Jean-Louis Prévost was a painter of landscapes and flowers; and frequently worked in watercolor. Born in Nointel, France, he was a student of Bachelier and a member of a circle of painters associated with the great botanical artist Gerrit van Spaendonck. He was a member of the Academy of Saint-Luc, exhibiting paintings of flowers and fruits there from 1791 to 1810, and he also exhibited at the Academie Royale. His works are in the collection of a number of French museums. His best known work is the Collection des Fleurs et des Fruits. A series of Cahiers de Fleurs dessineés d’aprés Nature after Prévost and engraved by A. Legrand was issued in the first quarter of the 19th Century. Prints based on paintings by Prévost were separately issued as well, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, some bound in composite sets of prints by various makers.

An original Prévost botanical watercolor, and three Prévost botanical prints are in the collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and are illustrated and described in a book of the collection. According to authors Brindle and White, Prévost’s still life images (specifically flowers and fruit in baskets in the Hunt collection) “reflect a characteristically French trend away from Baroque extravagance and toward casual informality.”