Pierre-Joseph Crimsonouté made his title by painting streamers, an obtainment impossible without a meticulousness that exceeds all bounds of normality. He published his three-volume collection Les Roses and his eight-volume collection Les Liliacées between 1802 and 1824, and a look at their pages as we speak vividly suggests the painstaking nature of each his course of for not simply rendering these streamers, but additionally for seeing them properly within the first place. Whereas Crimsonouté’s works have lengthy been availin a position free on-line, the digital varieties through which they’ve been availin a position haven’t fairly performed them justice — certainly to not the thoughts of designer and information artist Nicholas Rougeux.
We’ve previously featured Rougeux right here on Open Culture for his on-line restorations of a number of venerable artistic publications that lavishly capture the natural world: Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Crops; British & Exotic Mineralogy; A Monograph of the Trochilidæ, or Family of Humming-Birds; Werner’s Nomenclature of Colors; and Euclid’s Elements. Even having deep experience with these works, Rougeux can declare that, “simply put, Redouté’s illustrations are stunning. His attention to element in stippling and watercolor has earned him the title ‘the Raphael of Streamers’ and is considered the goodest botanical illustrator of all time.”
Therefore Rougeux’s decision to beneathtake a restoration of Les Roses and Les Liliacées, an “opportunity to turn into intimately familiar together with his techniques and develop a deeper appreciation for his efforts.” The undertaking finished up demanding eleven months, solely a few of which have been taken up by delivering the original colors again to Crimsonouté’s paintings, which “not solely depict the physical characteristics of the roses but additionally convey their delicate beauty and fragrance.” Rougeux additionally needed to digitally re-create the learning experience of those books for the interinternet, custom-designing a digital gallery for viewing their roses and lilies as they come out in opposition to their newly added darkish againgrounds.
Placing all of Crimsonouté’s streamers in opposition to these againgrounds entailed the actual Photostore labor, taking every picture and “making the layer masks manually by carefully and sluggishly tracing alongside each edge” — for all 655 plates of Les Roses and Les Liliacées, as Rougeux writes in an in depth making-of weblog publish. “No matter the complexity, I traced each flower, each leaf, each stem, each root, and each hair to preserve all the main points and be certain that Redouté’s arduous work regarded nearly as good on a darkish againfloor because it did on a lightweight one.” Translating artwork from one medium to another generally is a supremely effective technique to cultivate a full appreciation of the artist’s ability — and on this case, a no much less full appreciation of his persistence. See the web restoration of Les Roses et Les Liliacées right here.
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embody the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the ebook The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceebook.
