HAND-COLOURED – FROM THE LIBRARY OF ARPAD PLESCH DREVES, [Johann Friedrich Peter,] and [Friedrich Gottlob] HAYNE [and Johann Stephan CAPIEUX (engraver)].

Choix de plantes d’Europe, décrites et dessinées d’après nature … tome I, avec 25 planches [– tome II, avec 25 planches; – tome III, avec 25 planches; – tome IV, avec 25 planches; – tome V, avec 25 planches].

First edition in French, the Plesch set, with 125 handsomely hand-coloured botanical plates, adapted from the German edition finished the previous year. Issued under the title Botanisches Bilderbuch für die Jugend und Freunde der Pflanzenkunde, the work had first appeared in twenty-eight fascicles (with 152 plates) from 1794 to 1801. The text comprises detailed descriptions and classifications of the plants, accompanied by notes on their locations and uses; the plates are the work of Johann Stephan Capieux (1748–1813), professor of drawing at the University of Leipzig from 1782 and among the most accomplished German natural-history illustrators of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

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