“Roses?” The man said. “You’ve come to see the roses?”
He was speaking to me from behind the bars of the big entrance gate to Malmaison, which was once Napoleon and Josephine’s country manor outside Paris.
Yes, indeed I told him that I had come all the way from Co Kildare to feast my eyes on Josephine’s rose garden.
The man behind the bars shook his head. “It is the end of the season, madame, and the house and the gardens are closed.”
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I stood there in shock. “But, but, could I just see the roses?”
“There are no roses to be seen, madame, we are reorganising the rose beds.” And to prove his point he stepped aside. There were lines of dug up plants scattered everywhere.
It must have been the look of devastation on my face and the tears forming in my eyes that had some effect on him. Add to which I told of how I had come to Paris in the springtime with friends, but roses don’t bloom in spring and I had promised myself a return visit at the end of summer. This was it.
The man behind the gate stood there while I told of the birthday gift of this weekend in Paris with my daughter and, yes, we would go to Malmaison. And there we were standing in the drizzling rain having walked for kilometres in the wrong direction.
There was no one about to ask for directions, so we kept walking straight on until we reached a shopping area. There we were told that we should have turned right at the station and had to retrace our steps – still in drizzling rain – but Josephine’s rose garden was the goal and we had made it.
The man sighed, but softened sufficiently to open the gate and invite us up the garden path.
“Roses”, he said. “I will show you roses. Come with me.” It was a bit of a surprise to be taken inside the house and ushered upstairs through room after luxurious room until we reached Josephine’s apartments.
There he removed a large folder from a cabinet, placed it on a table saying: “Now behold Empress Josephine’s Roses.” And, yes, indeed they were there. It was a folio of watercolour, waterproof, watermark paintings of roses so beautiful I felt that I could actually smell their perfume.
The man patiently turned over page after page for us until my eyes were dazzled with their absolute perfection.
“Pierre-Joseph Redouté,” he said, “was the artist who captured Empress Josephine’s original roses in watercolour.” As we had never heard of him, the man at Malmaison told us his story.
Redouté was born into a family of artists in what is now Belgium in 1759. He began painting when he was five and left his home in St Hubert when he was only 13-years-old to earn his living from his art.
His brother was already working in Paris designing and painting scenery for the theatre. Redouté eventually joined his brother, but he spent his spare time at the Jardin du Roi studying and painting flowers there.
Soon his work was recognised by the greatest botanists of the time and he was invited to participate in the depiction of the flowers of the French court. He was appointed as official court artist by queen Marie Antoinette.
Redouté painted the flowers of the gardens at the Petit Trianon so beautifully that they called him the Raphael of Flowers.
During the French Revolution and Reign of Terror, he was appointed to document gardens that became national property. He collaborated with the greatest botanists of his day and participated in nearly 50 publications.
However, it was during the patronage of the generous Empress Josephine that Redouté’s career flourished and he produced his most sumptuous paintings of the roses in her garden. She was reputed to have almost 200 different varieties at Malmaison; Redouté captured all of them in watercolour.
After Josephine’s death in 1814, Redouté had some difficult years until he was appointed a master of draughtsmanship for the National Museum of Natural History.
He gave drawing classes at the museum and many of his pupils were said to be aristocrats or royalty. He became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in 1825. He lived to 80 and on his death was interred in Pére Lachaise cemetery, Paris.
A fountain was erected in his honour in his hometown of St Hubert and in recent years a museum of his work has been opened.
The man at Malmaison ushered us back down the garden path and bid us adieu, leaving us with a lasting memory of Redouté’s perfect depiction of Josephine’s roses. Maybe someday I’ll return to Malmaison when those roses are in bloom.
