Ravenala, the Traveler's Tree, Three Antique Botanical Plates, 1806

About this sheet

This set of three original antique copper engravings, Plates 124, 125 and 126 from Sonnerat's Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, is sold as one set. They are three original sheets sold together as one lot, and the set is never split. Plate 124 shows the ravenala or travelers tree of Madagascar, the whole plant drawn with its great fan of paddle shaped leaves spread above a ringed trunk. Plate 125 shows the flower cluster of the ravenala with its boat shaped bracts, numbered 1 to 4 with the bud, the open flower and a single stamen drawn separately. Plate 126 shows the fruit cluster of the ravenala, the ranked boat shaped bracts opening along a zigzag stem to show the packed seeds within. Each sheet carries its engraved plate number at the upper right, the artist and engraver credits at the foot of the image and its caption lettered beneath.

The sheets come from the Collection de planches pour servir au Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine, the plate volume issued in Paris by Dentu, Imprimeur-Libraire of the quai des Augustins, in 1806. The plates were engraved on copper after drawings Pierre Sonnerat made in the field between 1774 and 1781, while he served the French crown as a naval commissary at Yanam and Pondicherry and traveled on from India to China, Malacca, Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope. The images are copper engravings, printed in black on laid paper with a clear plate mark, the lettering cut below each image in the same plate. No color was applied, which is how the volume was issued.

The botanical plates close the volume and are the quietest sheets in it. Sonnerat drew the useful and the strange: the spice plants, the fruit trees and the flowering trees of the Indian Ocean, generally with a fruit or a flower taken apart and drawn separately so that the structure can be read. All three sheets are the same size and the same orientation and come from one volume of one book, which is why they are offered as a set and not one at a time. The travelers tree is one of the plants that made Madagascar famous in Europe, and Sonnerat gave it three consecutive plates: the whole tree, the flower cluster and the fruit. All three are here, so the set is the complete account the book devotes to the plant.

Light uneven toning, browner towards the edges. Marked handling soiling along the edges of all three sheets. Scattered light foxing in the margins of all three sheets. Slight wear at the corners of one of the three sheets.

These are original antique prints, not modern reproductions. This item is sold unframed. Any framed or interior images are shown for presentation and inspiration only, unless the listing explicitly states that the item is sold framed.