Orange Fruit - Vintage Botanical Illustration by Pierre-Joseph Redouté c.1800s - Japanese Unryu Rice Paper Art Print 24 x 32 in

Pacifica Island Art uses an environmentally-friendly Unryu Japanese rice paper made by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima, Japan. Unryu, which translates to 'cloud dragon paper' in Japanese, features long strands of kozo fiber and is made from natural mulberry and hemp fibers using traditional Japanese Washi techniques - ABOUT THE ARTIST - Pierre-Joseph Redouté - Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759 – 1840) was a painter and botanist from Belgium, known for his watercolours of roses, lilies and other flowers at Malmaison. He was nicknamed 'the Raphael of flowers' and has been called the greatest botanical illustrator of all time. He was an official court artist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and he continued painting through the French Revolution and Reign of Terror. Redouté 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 collaborated with the greatest botanists of his day and participated in nearly fifty publications depicting both the familiar flowers of the French court and plants from places as distant as Japan, America, South Africa, and Australia. He was painting during a period in botanical illustration (1798 – 1837) that is noted for the publication of outstanding folio editions with coloured plates. Redouté produced over 2,100 published plates depicting over 1,800 different species, many never rendered before. Today he is seen as an important heir to the tradition of the Flemish and Dutch flower painters Brueghel, Ruysch, van Huysum and de Heem.