Style Imitating Art: Les Roses by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

My roses aren’t in bloom yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wear all the flowers on my clothes. Here’s another outfit inspired by art…

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Terri of MeadowTree Style, and Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as curator, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the curator by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the curator will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join! You are invited to share your images on Instagram or other social media platforms. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Terri, and Shelbee or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

The Inspiration Artwork

The inspiration artwork was chosen by Terri. You can read why she picked this work here.

Les Roses by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

About the Artist: Pierre-Joseph Redouté

Pierre-Joseph Redouté was a Belgian botanist and painter who was born on July 10, 1759, in Luxembourg. Both his father and grandfather were painters and his older brother was an interior decorator and scenery designer. Coming from an artistic lineage, he never received a formal education. Instead, he began work as a traveling painter at the age of 13, receiving religious commissions as well as other portrait commissions. In 1782, at the age of 23, he moved to Paris where he joined his brother in painting scenery for theaters.

He married Marie-Marte Gobert in 1786 and together they had two daughters.

While in Paris, Redouté met two French botanists who inspired his interest in botanical illustration which was a quickly growing discipline at the time. He began receiving botanical instruction so he could dissect his floral subjects and illustrate their characteristics with scientific precision. This career path eventually led to his introduction into the court at Versailles and Marie Antoinette became his patron. He ultimately was awarded the title of Draughtsman and Painter to the Queen’s Cabinet.

In 1798, the Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, became his patron. She appointed him as her official artist a few years later. In 1809, he began teaching painting to Princess Adélaïde of Orléans.

Following six difficult years in the aftermath of Empress Joséphine’s death, he was appointed by the National Museum of Natural History as a master of draughtsmanship in 1822. In 1824, he offered drawing classes at the museum and gained a student population of royals and aristocrats. He was awarded the Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825.

Redouté continued to paint and teach until he died from a stroke on June 19 or 20, 1840, at the age of 80. He is buried  in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.

Redouté is best known for his watercolors of roses, lilies, and other flowers. Due to his work that began as an official court artist to Marie Antoinette, he became regarded as the greatest botanical illustrator of all time, which earned him the nickname “the Raphael of flowers”. During his long career, he produced hundreds of botanical watercolors using stipple engravings.

His paintings for Les Roses were purchased by Charles X of France for his widowed daughter-in-law. The location of most of the paintings is virtually untraceable from this point. Some were acquired and sold by Sotheby’s in London with single sheets repeatedly appearing at auction.

About the Art: Les Roses

Les Roses is Pierre-Joseph Redouté’s most significant and well known body of work which was commissioned while he was under the patronage of the Empress Josephine. He presented his floral illustrations as classical portraits which represent the subject on a blank background with no visible setting. This style of composition gives a regal simplicity to the subject that allows the viewer an undistracted focus on the complex details of each flower’s characteristics.

He used a technique called stipple engraving which lended itself to the reproduction of botanical details. The process involved engraving a copper plate with a dense grid of dots. By modulating the density of the dots, different gradations of color can be conveyed. Once the printing with the copper plates was completed, the artist finished the work by filling it in with watercolors.

I can only find details about the two pink roses that Terri chose. The top left one, Rosa centifolia foliacea, and the bottom right rose, Rosa Damascena, both measure 13.75 x 10 inches (34.9 x 25.4 cm). But if you look at some of his other rose illustrations, the sheets vary in size from these smaller ones to as large as 22 x 14.5 inches (55.9 x 36.8 cm).

Resources/References:

• Pierre-Joseph Redouté: Wikipedia
• PIERRE-JOSEPH REDOUTÉ (1759-1840), LES ROSES

About My Outfit

Until I walked into my closet room with the intention of creating an outfit for this art challenge, I had no idea what was going to happen. The only thing I had decided was to use all four rose illustrations as a collection to inspire my outfit rather than limiting myself to just one rose.

I have lots and lots of floral things hanging in my closet, many of which are kimonos, so I started there, scouring through the hangers looking for a floral print that had similar colors to the yellows, pinks, purples, and greens of the four rose illustrations. Two kimonos jumped out at me as suitable for what I was looking for…this white floral high-low hem kimono and this black floral tulip hem kimono. So I set the kimonos aside and began to search for a long sleeved dress in either pink, purple, yellow, green, or white. It had to be long sleeved because it is still really cold here (39˚F / 3.8˚C when we took these photos) and it also had to coordinate with at least one of the kimonos.

I found two dresses that seemed like they would work with either kimono, this yellow swing dress with a tiny white floral print and this pink and white floral dress. Then I tried both dresses on with both kimonos to see which I liked best. And guess what? It was really hard to decide because all four combinations looked pretty darn cute! I ultimately settled on the yellow dress with the white floral kimono because I felt like the color palette was the most representative of the paintings.

Once I had decided on a combination of a short dress with a kimono, I knew that I wanted to wear my white cowgirl boots with matching tights to really pay homage to the stark white background of the artwork. I went looking for a floral scarf that would coordinate and this extra large one was right on top as if it were meant to go with this outfit. I last wore this scarf as a top for a Songful Style challenge. And since it is still so cold outside, I grabbed my favorite hippie cardigan in a fair aisle design that was a perfect match and the perfect weight for early spring weather.

I accessorized with a new straw hat, three long tassel necklaces, gold filigree earrings, and five different floral scrunchies in my hair. The five different scrunchy prints brought my print mix total for this outfit to nine (dress, kimono, cardigan, scarf, and five scrunchies). If you count the texture of my hat and the stitching design on my boots, it would be eleven. Either way, it is my personal record in print mixing with my previous best being eight.

I have very little botanical knowledge so it is difficult for me to discern different flower varieties especially when they are printed on textiles. But to my untrained eye, there appear to be some flowers in my prints that could be roses. I also made sure to incorporate all the dominant colors from the four paintings. If you look closely at the floral prints, you can see yellows, pinks, purples, and greens.

We went to the garden at the Jefferson County Historical Society for photos, but as you can see, there are no flowers in bloom yet in this icy cold place. So I brought the flowers to the garden instead! And apparently my floral outfit attracted a very clingy tick.

After taking these photos, I was changing into my cooking clothes and I felt something crawling on my stomach area. I looked down and I saw what appeared to be a tiny little spider crawling on me just above my belly button, so I attempted to flick it off of me. When it didn’t flick away, I quickly realized it was a tick as it was already starting to burrow into my skin. So in the fashion of a person who has a terrible phobia of parasitic creatures like ticks, lice, tapeworms, and some humans, I started screaming and flailing my arms around and ultimately flicked the tick off of my body only to realize that I now had a live tick crawling around my bedroom with three pets and six people in my house as healthy hosts. So Jeff grabbed the vacuum cleaner and swept the whole floor hoping for the best.

However, this was not satisfactory for me. I needed to see a dead tick body before I would feel safe from that tiny tormentor. Then Jeff, with his super-vision, spotted the nasty thing crawling on a pillow. He sucked it up in the vacuum, emptied it outside, and we cheered at its demise. I got to see the dead tick body exiting my home, but still I had the creepy crawlies all day long. Damn parasites.

Despite the tick incident, this has been another successful style challenge, in my opinion, because once again I have created an outfit combination that I absolutely love but would not have otherwise thought to put together if not for this prompt. So if you are ever feeling stuck about what to wear, why not try one of our fun little challenges? You might surprise yourself!

Be sure to check out Terri’s interpretation of the artwork as well as Salazar’s take on it. If you would like to participate in this challenge and have your photo included in Terri’s review post on Wednesday, April 12, 2023, be sure to email your photos to her at meadowtreestyle@gmail.com by Tuesday, April 11, 2023, by 10:00 p.m. EST. I look forward to seeing your creative interpretations.

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee

Linking up with these Fabulous Link Parties.

Outfit Details: Cardigan-Indigo Sun / Dress-Old Navy / Kimono-Rosegal / Hat and Scarf-Torrid / Boots-Idyllwind by Miranda Lambert (Boot Barn) / Tights-Thrifted (NWT) / Scrunchies-Amazon / Earrings and Necklaces-Old