Postcards Reliefs - Album Vilmorin: Plantes Potagères

These 12 plates represent hardy flowers, annuals and perennials, vegetables, and fodder plants. Published by Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie, they belong to the iconographic collection of a publishing enterprise carried out over forty-five years on "the extreme diversity of vegetable plants". Working on models collected at the Jardin des Plantes, no fewer than fifteen artists created the 46 images in this Vilmorin Album. First and foremost are the fine watercolourists Joséphine Coutance and Élisa Champin, flower experts who studied together at the Special and Free School of Drawing for Young People, opened in 1803 and the forerunner of the Arts-déco.