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Epistemology, techniques, and artisanal knowledge

The many shades of color in Rousseau’s botanical œuvre
Epistémologie, techniques et savoir artisanal. Les multiples nuances de couleur dans l'œuvre botanique de Rousseau
Alexandra Cook

Résumés

Jean-Jacques Rousseau est généralement considéré comme hostile à la couleur dans les arts visuels, affirmant que, contrairement aux peintures, les gravures non colorées « laissent quelque chose à faire à mon imagination […] et il me semble que je vois alors les objets tout comme ils sont dans la Nature ». Cette position est assurément cohérente avec la distinction entre qualités primaires et secondaires proposée par des philosophes tels que Locke, et représentée en botanique par l’exclusion de la couleur en tant que caractère de classification par Linné. Cependant, tout en approuvant la position de Linné, Rousseau colore les gravures de plantes (dont aucune n’a été conservée) et valorise les couleurs dans les spécimens d’herbiers et les illustrations botaniques. Cette prédilection pour l’image ou le spécimen botanique coloré pourrait découler de son statut de « non-art » (technique). Par ailleurs, peut-être que son « imagination riante, mais languissante » (Rêveries, Septième promenade) est de moins en moins capable de se représenter, sans le secours de la couleur, l’image complète de la plante même.

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Notes de l’auteur

The author wishes to thank Florike Egmond, Aurélia Gaillard, Timothée Léchot, Guilia Simonini and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts for their helpful comments, as well as the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Peking University, Beijing China, for a residential fellowship that supported preparation of the penultimate version. This work was carried out as part of the Sinergia project “Héritages botaniques des Lumières : exploration de sources et d’herbiers historiques à l’intersection des lettres et des sciences / Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment: unexplored collections and texts at the crossroads between humanities and sciences” (Grant n° 186227) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Texte intégral

  • 1 My emphasis, Rousseau to Madeleine-Catherine Delessert, no location, 24 May 1773, Correspondance co (...)

Vos plantes sont parfaitement bien conservées, les couleurs surtout, ce qui était difficile pour la fleur bleue.1

  • 2 See Tanja Kleinwächter, Sarah Lowengard and Friedrich Steinle (dir.), Ordering colors in 18th and e (...)

1Bookended by the 1704 publication of Sir Isaac Newton’s prism experiments in Opticks and color taxonomies published in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, was color’s emergence as its own field of knowledge2. Indeed, according to Aurélia Gaillard’s recent landmark study:

  • 3 Original emphasis, Aurélia Gaillard, L’invention de la couleur par les lumières. De Newton à Goethe(...)

[…] le xviiie siècle est le moment, dans l’Occident, où la couleur surgit. La couleur devient un outil pour penser le monde, s’y situer, l’habiter et aussi en jouir […] Au xviiie siècle, on pense mais aussi on habite la couleur, en couleurs. Cette nouvelle conception et prise de conscience de la couleur accompagne alors un nouveau rapport au monde pour lequel celle-ci est à la fois un instrument de connaissance (le voir coloré) mais aussi une expérience sensible (le vivre en couleurs). C’est en ce sens que les Lumières inventent la couleur.3

  • 4 Prussian blue, allegedly created in Prussia c. 1704 and by 1724 available in France, is the textboo (...)

2This development marked not only the pictorial arts, but also a wide range of domains, including botany, mineralogy, chemistry, porcelain production and textile manufacturing, among others. In a particularly noteworthy case, an alchemical accident created the hugely popular Prussian blue, one of the colors to which Jean-Jacques Rousseau refers in the lists discussed later in this paper4.

  • 5 Anna Marie Roos, “Philosophy and Science”, A Cultural history of color in the Age of Enlightenment, (...)
  • 6 Charlotte Guichard, “La question du coloris. Palettes et tableaux: Des laboratoires de la couleur?” (...)
  • 7 “[…] chaque couleur est déterminée par l’angle de réfraction du rayon qui la donne […]”. (Jean-Jacq (...)

3At the theoretical level, Opticks by no means settled the major questions concerning light and color: “…a variety of theories of color existed from 1600 to 1800, and […] the pre-paradigmatic state of color theory persisted even after Newton’s publication of the Opticks in 1704”5. From 1720 onwards – the year the first French translation of Opticks was published – “les débats sur les théories de la lumière et de la couleur, dans le contexte de l’essor des sciences expérimentales, prennent une dimension publique et souvent polémique”6. Thus, in the salons and philosophe circles in which Rousseau moved, Newton’s ideas remained an ongoing subject of debate; while Rousseau rarely mentions Newton, the Essai sur l’origine des langues makes Rousseau’s agreement with Newton’s color theory explicit7.

  • 8 “Depuis l’Antiquité, les théoriciens et les critiques d’art considèrent en effet ‘le dessin’ comme (...)
  • 9 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 413. “C’est ain (...)
  • 10 Jakob Heinrich Meister to Johann Heinrich Meister, Bern, 1 June 1764, CC, no 3311. While Rousseau’s (...)

4Yet, as color was coming into its own in both familiar and new domains, Rousseau’s Essai reprised arguments already advanced in Antiquity8, subordinating color to dessin (form): “L’intérêt et le sentiment ne tiennent point aux couleurs ; les traits d’un tableau touchant nous touchent encore dans une estampe ; ôtez ces traits dans le tableau, les couleurs ne feront plus rien.” Hence, “[d]e belles couleurs bien nuancées plaisent à la vue mais ce plaisir est purement de sensation. C’est le dessin […] qui donne à ces couleurs de la vie et de l’âme”9. This view is echoed in Rousseau’s purported observation that engravings “laissent quelque chose à faire à [l’]imagination […] et il me semble que je vois alors les objets tout come ils sont dans la Nature10. Rousseau’s argument here is that the best image is an uncolored one.

  • 11 James Elkins, The Domain of images, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 3-12. See also Alexa (...)
  • 12 See e.g. Kärin Nickelsen, Draughtsmen, botanists and nature: The construction of eighteenth-century (...)

5However, it is important to consider the distinction, undoubtedly recognized at the time, between aesthetic images such as the “tableau”, and technical or informational images such as botanical illustrations. In fact, the majority of images in the world have in principle no aesthetic purpose or status; in modern parlance, these are known by a variety of terms such as “nonart” (the term adopted here), “technical”, “informational” or “epistemic” images11. In Rousseau’s day, nonart images included engravings, woodblock prints and Naturselbstdrucke. Specialized draughtsmen and women prepared the images, often under the direction of a specialist such as a botanist12. Yet even if not intended as aesthetic productions, such images, according to Elkins, may exhibit a strong engagement with their subject matter, share and/or borrow conventions from the fine arts and exert an aesthetic effect as strong as that of explicitly artistic works.

6Rousseau, however, is to the best of my knowledge silent on the status of “nonart” images: so, we do not know if he was aware of, or accepted such a distinction. Given his emphasis in the Essai on imagination in interpreting an engraving or a “tableau”, we may wonder if nonart images such as botanical illustrations depend on imagination to be rendered meaningful? And if so, does that mean they should remain uncolored? Or, if the privileged faculty of imagination is for any reason irrelevant to reception of the nonart image, is color then acceptable in nonart images such as plant engravings? Final answers to these questions may, alas, not be available.

  • 13 This distinction was already mooted in Antiquity. From the outset color figured in a debate centere (...)
  • 14 For Rousseau’s critical engagement with Locke’s works, see Johanna Lenne-Cornuez and Céline Spector(...)
  • 15 See Matthew Stuart, “Locke’s colors”, The Philosophical review, 112, 1, January 2003, p. 57-96.
  • 16 Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 421.

7Given Rousseau’s philosophical predilections, the form-color distinction underlined in the Essai may have had other sources apart from contemporary debates in painting and music. Indeed, his drawing of this distinction coheres with the much-debated epistemological distinction between matter’s purported primary and secondary qualities: is color, for example, part of matter or itself or merely perceived as being in matter13? This issue was elaborated by early-modern savants such as Galileo, Descartes, and Locke, whose works – in particular those of Locke – Rousseau knew well14. Locke’s position on color has been interpreted variously, with strict eliminativism – color is in the eye of the beholder – being one prominent view of his position15. Indeed, in the Essai, Rousseau adopts the strict eliminativist view: “Les couleurs ne sont pas dans les corps colorés mais dans la lumière. Pour qu’on voye un objet il faut qu’il soit éclairé.”16

  • 17 My emphasis, ibid., p. 413.
  • 18 Emily Dolan, The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the technologies of timbre, Cambridge, Cambridge (...)
  • 19 Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 419.

8Rousseau applied the primary-secondary qualities distinction expansively, taking in not only painting and engraving, but also music and botany: in music harmony is to color what melody is to form or dessin: “La mélodie fait précisément dans la musique ce que fait le dessin dans la peinture; c’est elle qui marque les traits et les figures dont les accords et les sons ne sont que les couleurs17. Such an analogy was related to notions of correspondences between color and music, starting with Aristotle, for whom “colors were determined like musical intervals, suggesting that […] there might be a color-scale analogous to the musical scale”. Newton argued “that the widths of colors in the spectrum, as refracted through a prism, shared the same relative lengths as the strings that gave the pitches of the musical scale”18. In contrast with Newton’s mathematically-based color-sound analogy, Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757), attempted to build a “clavecin oculaire” that translated sounds into colors assigned according to Castel’s personal preferences. In the Essai Rousseau rejected Castel’s initiative, which he had personally witnessed, arguing that “[l]ʼesprit de système a tout confondu, & faute de savoir peindre aux oreilles, on sʼest avise de chanter aux yeux. Jʼai vu ce fameux Clavecin, sur lequel on pretendoit faire de la Musique avec des couleurs…”19.

  • 20 Carl von Linné, Philosophia botanica, Stockholm, G. Kiesewetter, 1751, sec. 167.
  • 21 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fragments de botanique, ed. Roger de Vilmorin, OC, vol. 4, p. 1 (...)
  • 22 My emphasis, Rousseau to Mme Delessert, Paris, 18 October 1771; CC, no 6898.

9In botany Rousseau follows Linné’s relegation of color, taste and smell to an inferior status20. Rousseau writes that plants’ “figure” and “organisation” are critical, while “leur couleur, leur gout, leur odeur, leur saveur […] n’est qu’une étude secondaire, pour éclairer et confirmer celle des formes21. Similarly, he wrote to Madeleine-Catherine Delessert (1747-1816): “Dans ce Calice vous trouverez une corolle composée de quatre pétales dont je laisse à part la couleur, parce qu’elle ne fait pas caractère22.

10Yet, in his botanical preoccupations Rousseau seems to contradict his philosophical defense of the primary and secondary qualities distinction and his desire to subordinate color to form: he was both a passive and active user of all manner of color-related materials, from illustrated botanical works – usually containing uncolored woodblock or engraved images – to painters’ supplies, including key colors for plant images: greens, reds, blues and yellow-browns. He likewise prized good color preservation in herbarium specimens, as indicated in the epigraph above.

  • 23 An apparent colorlessness in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse is belied by an “esthétique de suggestio (...)
  • 24 Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (dir.), Materials and expertise in early-modern Europe: Between market (...)
  • 25 Concerning color in Rousseau’s early botanical studies, see Alexandra Cook, “Jean-Jacques s’initie (...)

11While recent scholarship nuances Rousseau’s attitude toward color in, for example, La Nouvelle Héloïse, little, if any, attention has been given to the role of color in Rousseau’s botanical work23. Furthermore, the scholarship has more generally, with rare exceptions, neglected the myriad and important ways in which Rousseau’s artisanal inclinations and background influenced how he practiced botany and perceived plants. As Pamela Smith, Pamela Long and others have argued, early-modern natural knowledge was rooted in artisanal techniques24. This essay is an attempt, albeit a brief one, to begin to rectify this neglect25.

12In the following sections, I address, first, what I term Rousseau’s pictorial turn – his initiative to secure an ample supply of illustrated botanical works –; second, his artisanal knowledge of color and how to apply it, and finally, the presence of color in his herbaria.

Rousseau’s pictorial turn

  • 26 Such concerns persist in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, which use plant materials rather than repli (...)
  • 27 See e.g. Samir Boumediene, La colonisation du savoir. Une histoire des plantes médicinales du “Nouv (...)

13Picturing plants is far more than a pleasant pastime or an ornament for the bookshelf or wall. An elective affinity between image-making and plant knowledge owes its long existence to the role of plants in medicine: health practitioners sought the most accurate plant images they could, as it was imperative that they know exactly which plant they were using to treat a patient26. Seen in this light, illustrations can be understood as indispensable in plant-based medicine, particularly when a plant has more than one name (synonyms) or a name referring to more than one species. Unrelated plants not sharing the same therapeutic properties might, on the basis of similar appearance or for commercial reasons, assume the name of a famous healing plant such as Cinchona (source of the anti-malarial quinine) or ginseng, which currently designates twelve plant species from six different genera, each with its own chemistry and therapeutic properties27.

  • 28 Jules Janick and John Stolarczyk, “Ancient Greek illustrated Dioscoridean herbals: Origins and impa (...)
  • 29 Quentin Hiernaux and Corentin Tresnie, Andrea Cesalpino’s De Plantis Libri XVI (1583) and the Trans (...)
  • 30 Carl von Linné, Genera plantarum, 2nd ed., Leiden, C. Wishoff, 1742, p. viii.

14Ideally, good illustrations could help resolve such confusions, but as the ancients were already aware, illustrations can also mislead due to the differences among plants in different seasons and at different life stages28. Thus, Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) calls the pictorial tradition into question, arguing like Pliny, that an image can be misleading and not exhaustive29. In the eighteenth century Linné famously characterized images of plants as merely for “boys”, that is to say, immature students30.

  • 31 See e.g. Sam George, Botany, sexuality and women’s writing 1760-1830: From modest shoot to forward (...)
  • 32 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, OC, vol. 1, 1959, p. 6 (...)

15Given that Rousseau has been portrayed as a follower of all things Linnaean, we should expect him to follow his purported master in largely dispensing with botanical images, not to mention colored ones31. This turns out not to have been the case, with Rousseau embracing illustrated botanical works, while explicitly criticizing Linné’s rejection of images, in which a number of other authors of the period concurred32. For example, while highlighting the colors of flowers, Rousseau expresses his frustration with Linné’s opposition to illustrations in a letter to the Duchess of Portland:

  • 33 Rousseau refers to London botanist and apothecary, James Petiver (1663-1718), whose works had recen (...)
  • 34 In this context “caractéristique” refers to the specific characters relied upon in a particular sys (...)
  • 35 My emphasis, Rousseau to Margaret Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, Wootton Hall, 12 February 1 (...)

Les livres des botanistes modernes n’instruisent que les botanistes ; ils sont inutiles aux ignorans. Il nous manque un livre vraiment élémentaire, avec lequel un homme qui n’auroit jamais vu de plantes pu[t] parvenir à les étudier Seul […] le Petiver33 m’aide beaucoup par ses figures qui prêtent à mon imagination autant qu’un objet sans couleur peut y prêter. C’est encore un grand défaut des botanistes modernes de l’avoir négligée entiérement. Quand j’ai vu dans mon Linnaeus la Classe et l’ordre d’une plante qui m’est inconnue, je voudrais me figurer cette plante, savoir si elle est grande ou petite, si la fleur est bleue ou rouge, me représenter son port ? Rien. Je lis une description caractéristique34, d’après laquelle je ne puis rien me représenter. Cela n’est-il pas désolant ?35

16In early 1767 Rousseau expressed the same frustration with the botanical literature, informing Daniel Malthus of his intention to sell his books and engravings in order to purchase plant engravings to supply images of plants discussed in the works of learned authors:

  • 36 My emphasis, Rousseau to Daniel Malthus, no location, 2 January 1767, CC, no 5655.

Il me semble que tous les livres qu’on écrit sur la botanique ne sont bons que pour ceux qui la savent déjà […]. J’ai pris le parti de renoncer à toute lecture et de vendre mes livres et mes estampes, pour acheter des plantes gravées ; sans avoir le plaisir d’apprendre, j’aurai celui d’étudier et pour mon objet cela revient à peu près au même.36

  • 37 See e.g. Cook, op. cit., p. 147-148.
  • 38 This largely ignored aspect of Rousseau’s botanical knowledge is confirmed by the detailed inventor (...)
  • 39 “Il peut cependant s’en trouver d’Anglais comme Parkinson et le Gerard […] que peut être n’avez-vou (...)
  • 40 Rousseau to Pierre Guy, London, 20 January 1766, CC, no 4994.

17In order to address this deficiency, Rousseau made ample use of illustrated plant compendia emanating, in particular, from the very medical tradition he so often criticized37. From 1763 onwards – an earlier date than usually mooted for the commencement of Rousseau’s botanical studies – he consulted, and in many cases, purchased. illustrated botanical texts not only from his own era, but also from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries38. The authors in question included John Parkinson (1567-1650), John Gerard (1545-1612), Hieronymus Tragus (1498-1554), Jakob Dietrich (Theodorus) von Bergzabern (c.1520-1590), known in Latin as Tabernaemontanus, Valerius Cordus (1515-1544), Rembert Dodoens (1517-1585), Fabio Colonna (1567-1650), Petro Andrea Mattioli (1500-1577), Matthias de Lobel (1538-1616), and Carolus Clusius (1526-1609)39. Acquiring such works was invariably costly and time-consuming, entailing not only a considerable expenditure on Rousseau’s part, but also a substantial expenditure of time and effort to track them down. These efforts are reflected in Rousseau’s extensive correspondence with booksellers and other correspondents. Rousseau wrote, shortly after his arrival in London, that he would approach a Strasbourg bookseller for assistance with book purchases to be sent to London via Amsterdam: “J’avois eu l’intention de prendre à Strasbourg chez M. Koenig quatre livres de botanique, savoir: Mathiolus, Michelius, Valerius Cordus et le Pinax de Gaspard Bauhin […]”40.

  • 41 Rousseau, “Annotations”, op. cit.
  • 42 Ibid., s.v. “L’Herbe aux cuillers, ou cochléaria”. Rousseau likewise criticizes Regnault’s suggesti (...)
  • 43 Ibid., s.v.Le Tamaris, ou Tamarisc”, no 115 in Rousseau’s version.

18However, while the correspondence indicates which books Rousseau wanted to acquire or had borrowed from others, notably Malesherbes (an avid botanist with a large library), substantive comments about these works are found in other sources, including Rousseau’s extensive, but little-known, annotations to the Regnaults’ La Botanique mise à la portée de tout le monde41. These annotations refer once each to Clusius, Gessner, Cordus, and Gerard, while referring several times each to Caspar Bauhin (11 references), Dodoens (4 references), and Matthioli (3 references). Commenting, for example, on Regnault’s description of horseradish (Cochlearia armoracia L.), Rousseau writes, “cette plante, comme l’ont remarqué Gesner et Lobel a très peu de rapport au Telephium de Pline […]”42; in regard to Tamarisk, Rousseau draws on Clusius to correct Regnault: “Il devient [souvent] beaucoup plus grand, et Clusius assure en avoir vu en Espagne dont un homme avoit peine à embrasser le tronc”43.

  • 44 Sachiko Kusakawa, Picturing the book of nature: Image, text, and argument in sixteenth-century huma (...)
  • 45 Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, “A Woodblock’s career: Transferring visual botanical knowledge in the early (...)
  • 46 The high cost of engravings did not deter the Neapolitan botanist Fabio Colonna (1567-1650), whose (...)
  • 47 Kusakawa, op. cit., p. 71-75 (the page spread is due to three pages of illustrations inserted into (...)

19These Renaissance-era works were usually illustrated by uncolored woodblock prints, which proved to be a remarkably resilient reproduction method from the outset of the printing of botanical works on a mass scale in the sixteenth century, and for some 150 years thereafter. Even though woodblock and engraved illustrations coexisted since the late fifteenth century, woodblock prints had at least three advantages over engravings, in that (1) they could be printed together with movable type, (2) they cost one-tenth of an engraving44, and (3) a woodblock could be reused many times to produce repeatable, standardized images for any number of succeeding publications for decades or even centuries45. Woodblock prints were also more accurate than earlier manuscript images, the latter having degenerated over time due to repeated copying46. Renaissance woodblock prints might be colored, but unlike today, “[c]oloring of books [by hand] was arranged either by the publisher or by the purchaser in this period. Publishers produced bespoke colored copies for particular individuals, as well as ‘speculative’ copies for unspecified buyers”47.

  • 48 François-Alexandre-Pierre de Garsault, Les Figures de plantes et animaux d’usage en médecine, décri (...)

20More recent illustrated works acquired by Rousseau included Jacques Barrelier (1606-1673), Plantae per Galliam, Hispaniam et Italiam observatae (Paris, 1714), edited and published by Antoine de Jussieu and containing 1327 engravings of the plants of France, Spain and Italy. Another richly-illustrated, multi-volume compendium, recommended by Rousseau’s friend (and literary executor) Pierre-Alexandre DuPeyrou (1729-1794), was François-Alexandre-Pierre de Garsault, Les Figures de plantes et animaux d’usage en médecine. Upon gifting Rousseau a set of “couleurs” (discussed below), DuPeyrou advised: “Pour en faire usage, il ne faut pas être au fait de toutes les plantes. Mais il vous faut un Garsault”48. Garsault was precisely the kind of work Rousseau needed for his plant visualization project.

  • 49 My emphasis, Rousseau to Nicolas Bonaventure Duchesne, Môtiers, 16 December 1764, CC, no 3746.

21Other letters from this period attest to Rousseau’s difficulties in obtaining the text, and in particular the plates, for a richly-illustrated work by Pierre-Joseph Buc’hoz (1731-1807), Traité historique des plantes qui croissent dans la Lorraine et les trois évêchés (1762), in 10 volumes. The engravings were, of course the reason he purchased it in the first place. In connection with the missing plates, Rousseau makes a revealing comment concerning his burgeoning collection of botanical works: “Je ne manque pas de livres de botanique ; ce dont j’ai besoin, c’est des figures de plantes bien dessinées et bien gravées”49. Illustrated botanical works therefore supplied, in his eyes, an indispensable learning tool, given the lack of images in the work of Linné, as well as other contemporary authors.

Artisanship, color and knowledge

22Rousseau’s plant visualization project entailed a foray into what was for him a familiar – in all senses of the word – world of high-level artisanship, materials and techniques. Having been born into the skilled artisan class of Geneva – as the son of a master watchmaker, no less – he spent considerable time in artisans’ workshops –  not only that of his father, but also that of the master engraver to whom he had been apprenticed in Geneva. We should therefore think of Rousseau as always already embedded in a community of practice centered on Geneva that persisted – as shown by the correspondence discussed below – even after he renounced his Genevan citizenship in 1763.

23Later, having lived a very different life as a controversial philosophe, Rousseau returned to his artisanal roots, demonstrating a penchant for skill-based activities such as book-binding, lace-making and herbarium-making. For these pursuits he needed good hand skills and an artisan’s practiced eye.

  • 50 As discussed in Smith, op. cit., passim.
  • 51 See Alexandra Cook, “An idea ahead of its time: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s mobile botanical laboratory (...)

24An active engagement with plant visualization is no armchair activity; rather, it is practical, empirical and skill-based in the spirit of the problem-based learning imparted in Emile. Visualizing plants using color involved transmission of techniques and skill-based, unwritten artisanal know-how50. Thus, in considering Rousseau’s foray into the visualization of color in plants we immediately confront his affinity for artisanal techniques and practices, as well as his robust connections with the world of artisans that made these activities possible, thereby drawing on informally-transmitted knowledge and skills, much as he had done when working in the Dupins’ chemistry laboratory51.

25Hence our guiding questions are: How did Rousseau know what he knew about color? How was this knowledge transmitted, and translated into practice? For example, how did Rousseau know the names of the colors he requested, and how they were to be prepared?

26Taking a step back from these questions, let us briefly consider Rousseau’s affinity for working with color from an early stage. For example, in Confessions, he writes:

  • 52 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, ed. Bernard Gagnebin et Marcel Raymond (ed.), in O (...)

Le lavis des mappes […] m’avait aussi rendu le goût du dessin. J’achetai des couleurs et je me mis à faire des fleurs et des paysages. C’est dommage que je me suis trouvé peu de talent pour cet art ; l’inclination y était tout entière. Au milieu de mes crayons et mes pinceaux j’aurais passé des mois entiers sans sortir.52

  • 53 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile ou de l’éducation, ed. Charles Wirz and Pierre Burgelin, OC, vol. 4, p (...)
  • 54 Ibid., p. 407.

27Later, in Emile Rousseau constitutes an epistemological system in which of all the senses, that of sight is the preeminent means for acquiring knowledge of the world53. Even though Emile was written during the same time period as the anti-colorist Essai, an integral part of the child’s “learning to see” is apprehending colors in order to judge one’s relationship to one’s surroundings: “Nous voilà bien avertis de l’état des corps étrangers par rapport au nôtre, de leur poids, de leur figure, de leur couleur, de leur solidité, de leur grandeur, de leur distance, de leur température, de leur repos, de leur mouvement […]”54. Working directly with color also occupies for Rousseau a central role in early education:

  • 55 My emphasis, Rousseau, Emile, OC, vol. 4, p. 398.

Nous aurons des couleurs, des pinceaux ; nous tâcherons d’imiter le coloris des objets et toute leur apparence aussi bien que leur figure. Nous enluminerons, nous peindrons, nous barbouillerons ; mais, dans tous nos barbouillages, nous ne cesserons d’épier la nature ; nous ne ferons jamais rien que sous les yeux du maître.55

  • 56 My emphasis, Rousseau, Essai, OC, vol. 5, p. 419. Castel seems to have attempted the reverse: to pu (...)

28A few years later, while involved with his plant visualization project, Rousseau invoked painting, which is by definition colored, in an analogy that seems to be at odds with the position he earlier adopted against the “fausse analogie” of color to sound: “La musique […] peint tout, même les objets qui ne sont que visibles […] elle semble mettre l’oeil dans l’oreille”56.

  • 57 Rousseau to Jean-André Deluc, 20 December 1764; CC, no 3755. The optique, which later provided a me (...)
  • 58 Jean-André Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 December 1764; CC, no 3744. In response to Deluc, Rou (...)

29In visualizing plants Rousseau was interested in both uncolored images, which he could color himself, and colored ones that he could consult for information and/or inspiration. His correspondence in the years 1764 to 1767 contains numerous references to his procuring, with his correspondents’ assistance, paints and painters’ supplies such as brushes to color engravings (‘estampes’) of plants, flowers, and landscapes. Rousseau’s desire for illustrated works, and for paints to “enluminer des plantes et fleurs dans leurs couleurs naturelles” was initially part of a plan to project the images of plants in an “optique”57, a “machine dans laquelle un miroir et un grand verre lenticulaire redressent des estampes couchées horizontalement & en détachent les objets”58.

  • 59 D’Ivernois repeatedly assured Rousseau that any of the needed pigments could be sent to Môtiers fro (...)

30Rousseau may have abandoned the optique, but his interest in coloring plant engravings persisted, as attested by his correspondence not only with Pierre-Alexandre DuPeyrou of Neuchâtel, but also with three Genevans well-placed to send various painting supplies to Môtiers: François Coindet (1734-1809), Jean André Deluc (1727-1817) and Francois-Henri d’Ivernois (1722-1778)59. Due to the well-developed watchmaking industry and ancillary trades, Geneva was an ideal location for sourcing such supplies.

  • 60 Deluc fils, who became an accomplished savant, was a son of the watchmaker and political activist, (...)

31In late 1764 we read that D’Ivernois had recruited to this effort a fellow Genevan well-known to Rousseau, Jean-André Deluc60. Seeking clarification of Rousseau’s wishes, Deluc wrote:

  • 61 Deluc’s comment is perplexing, given that miniatures were a type of very small portrait. See e.g. K (...)
  • 62 Since empty shells were used to hold paints, they retained pigment traces useful in identifying the (...)
  • 63 My emphasis, Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 December 1764, CC, no 3744. In the eighteenth centu (...)

Voici, Mon cher Monsieur, une boëte qui contient à peu près toutes les couleurs qu’on emploie ordinairement dans la miniature et six bons pinceaux ; il y manque de l’outremer, mais il n’est essentiel que pour les portraits61. Ne sachant pas précisément quel usage vous voulez faire des couleurs que vous souhaitez, j’ai préféré cette boëte qui vous servira d’échantillon. Quand vous l’aurez examinée vous pourrez m’indiquer ce qui vous manque ou celles des couleurs dont vous croirez de faire un plus grand usage. Le nom de la couleur ou un morceau de la coquille62 suffira, on l’achètera alors séparément chez un droguiste.63

32In his reply, Rousseau gives detailed instructions regarding the desired colors:

  • 64 This comment attests to Rousseau’s ability to judge the raw materials of painting based, in all lik (...)
  • 65 “Florentine, or Chinese, and all Red Lakes of a solid colour are extracted from Cochineal [an insec (...)
  • 66 Cf. Deluc’s claim above that Rousseau would not need this color. Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 (...)
  • 67 Rousseau’s usage of “verd de Vessie [bladder green]” is yet another instance of informal knowledge (...)
  • 68 My emphasis, Rousseau to Deluc, Môtiers, 20 December 1764, CC, no 3755. As the manuscript of this l (...)
  • 69 See note above concerning “Encre de la Chine”.
  • 70 My emphasis, Rousseau to Deluc, Môtiers, 20 December 1764, CC, no 3755.

Je connais ces boites de Nuremberg; les couleurs en sont mauvaises et falsifiées64 je voudrais avoir à part une petite provision des couleurs les plus nécessaires comme Carmin65, outremer66, gomme gutte, verd de Vessie67, verd de gris68, encre de la Chine69 &c. et je voudrais surtout que ces couleurs en petite quantité fussent bien choisies et aussi pures qu’il est possible. Joignez-y aussi, je vous prie un peu de gomme arabique ; car on ne trouve ici rien du tout.70

  • 71 On the role of lists in knowledge creation, see James Delbourgo and Staffan Müller-Wille, “Focus: L (...)
  • 72 We do not know if Rousseau wrote the list while in the field with Neuhaus or afterwards. There is n (...)
  • 73Pigment” is generally understood to refer to a solid material that once combined with water, or gu (...)
  • 74 “These are all standard watercolor pigments in this period; the gommes are used as mediums, plastic (...)

33As above, Rousseau recorded in various lists the supplies he required, usually in letters to his correspondents71. However, the list reproduced below is found, independent of any correspondence, just beneath the list of plants Rousseau recorded (probably sometime in Spring or Summer 1765) in the context of an outing with Neuchâtel town physician, Frédéric Samuel Neuhaus (1733-1802).72 This long-neglected record implies the robust connection of botany to painting, listing not only colors, but also painter’s supplies such as gums, inks, brushes and shells for holding the pigments73. The colors listed correspond to the standard watercolor palette of the era74:

  • 75 MsR 21, fol. 45 verso, also published in Fragments de botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1254. Given that th (...)
  • 76 Rousseau clearly writes “Verd d’iris”, not to be confused with a different color, “vert de gris”, i (...)
  • 77 “Vermilion is artificial cinnabar. The latter is found in mercury mines and the former is made by m (...)
  • 78 “Ce mot de lacque s’est ensuite étendu à un grand nombre d’autres pâtes séches, ou poudres de diffé (...)
  • 79 See Guichard, et al., op. cit.
  • 80 Cf. Deluc’s 15 December 1764 letter stating that ultramarine was not essential for “miniatures”.
  • 81 “Cette couleur jaune que donne le stil de grain est fort susceptible par le mélange des qualités de (...)
  • 82 In his letter of 20 December, quoted above, Deluc refers to used painters’ shells to show the drugg (...)

Couleurs à se fournir75 (fig. 1)

Verd d’iris76.
Vermillon77
Lacque fine78
Bleu de Prusse79
Outremer très pur 10 à 12 grains au moins80
Stil de grain81.
Gomme-gutte
des coquilles vuides et quelques bons pinceaux.82

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

MsR21, fol. 45, verso, Neuchâtel, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire. In the upper right, we see three plant names, possibly belonging to the list of plants collected in 1765 with Samuel Frédéric Neuhaus, the city doctor of Neuchâtel. Below, we see a list of « Couleurs à se fournir », presumably intended for coloring plant engravings.

Image: Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel

  • 83 For example, Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) used thirty pigments in his illustrations (prepared 1786-1 (...)

34The number and range of colors had by the second half of the eighteenth century become so extensive it was imperative in the natural sciences to develop color taxonomies, reliable nomenclature and reference systems. Not only did the range of colors expand over the course of the century due to the addition of novel ones such as the famous Prussian blue, but the terms to describe colors were fluid and potentially overlapping83. As Sarah Lowengard notes in her landmark study, color names were notoriously unstable and difficult to pin down:

[…] a problem [that was] recognized in the eighteenth century and one that is no less of a problem now: the problem of defining color names. Even when we disregard the vagaries brought on by color vision, the identification of colors is confusing in its subjectivity. Names differ by language, region, producer, preparation methods, and occasionally the whim of a merchant. Different terms can indicate visually indistinguishable colors and, at the same time, one name might be used for dissimilar ones.84

  • 85 This point was noted at the time. See Patrice Bret, “Traduire les couleurs: Madame Picardet, le Pré (...)
  • 86 Karliczek, op. cit.

35The parallels with the crisis in botanical nomenclature are striking85; not only did color identification, like plant identification, require a rigid designator reform in the Linnaean spirit, but it was not so much artists, but rather, specialists in what would now be called the natural sciences who spearheaded the standardization of color nomenclature and reference systems: the entomologist Ignaz Schiffermüller (1727-1806), the mineralogist-geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749-1817) and the mineralogist and botanical illustrator James Sowerby (1757-1822)86 (fig. 2). Enterprises such as textile and porcelain manufacturing that relied heavily on accurate, repeatable colors, also played an important role in this process.

  • 87 Rousseau, Rêveries, OC, vol. 1, p. 1069-1070. Regarding botanical topics Rousseau discussed with co (...)
  • 88 The latter work appeared in Mme Picardet’s 1790 translation, Traité des caractères extérieurs des f (...)
  • 89 This point is discussed by Bret. Ibid., p. 237.

36However much he may have derided such concerns, Rousseau’s correspondence demonstrates a substantial engagement with taxonomic questions, and therefore, potentially, with standardized color reference systems87. Yet it is difficult to ascertain from the currently-available sources if he was aware of how color was coming under the taxonomic gaze. Major treatises on the subject such as Schiffermüller’s Entwurf eines Farbensystems (1771) and Werner’s Von den äußerlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien (Leipzig, Crusius, 1774) still lay in the future88. Even Linné, for whom color did not count with respect to plant classification, employed color in mineral classification89.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Color wheel (“Ordnung der Farbenclasse”) illustrating twelve colors from Ignaz Schiffermüller, Versuch eines Farbensystems (1772), p. 15. Wikimedia Commons. Note the prism experiment in the lower left corner, clearly a reference to Newton’s contributions to the field.

  • 90 During his stay in England, Rousseau disposed of hundreds of books, apart from those concerning bot (...)

37The most important contemporary written source for much previously-unrecorded artisanal knowledge was Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, which exhaustively covered the colors mentioned by Deluc and Rousseau: “Carmin”, “Bleu de Prusse”, “Outremer”, “Stil de grain”, “Verd-de-gris”, “Verd-d’iris”, and “Vermillon”. Since Rousseau had acquired volumes of the Encyclopédie prior to his departure from the Continent in 1766, he could have consulted some or all of these articles prior to disposing of most of his books during his stay in England (1766-1767)90.

38However, if our thesis is correct, Rousseau probably mainly relied for guidance about color on informal guidance by adepts such as Deluc and Coindet. The assistance rendered by these correspondents in more well-supplied urban areas was also crucial while Rousseau was living in remote locations such as Môtiers (principality of Neuchâtel), and Trye (France), as a guest of the Prince de Conti.

  • 91 It is not known at this writing if such a “machine” for mixing colors was in general use or was Coi (...)

39Not only did this correspondence among friends inform Rousseau about which colors and other products to purchase and for what purposes, it also informed him about the techniques required to transform raw pigments into paints. These artisanal processes involved various additives such as gums as well as use of stones, mortars or other mixing technology. For example, a letter from Coindet in late 1767 explains in some detail how to carry out these preparations and includes a curious reference to a “petite machine” for mixing colors91. In providing these explanations, the writer implies that Rousseau was not relying on someone else to prepare the colors, and that he was instead prepared to carry out this task himself:

  • 92 The “flanelle d’Angleterre” was for “Camisolles”. Coindet to Rousseau, no location, 4 November 1767 (...)

Je vous envoyai […] des pinceaux et les couleurs que vous vouliez avoir en plus grande quantité. La gomme gutte, et le vert de vessie se délayent tout Simplement Sans aucune préparation. Il faut bien broyer le bleu de Prusse et le vert distillé, et le délayer peu à peu avec de l’eau dans laquelle vous aurez fait fondre un peu de gomme arabique, il faut moins de gomme dans le vert que dans le bleu. Je n’ay pas encore pu vous faire faire la petite machine pour broyer les couleurs et je vous ay envoyé la mienne en attendant. Je vous enverrai par la première occasion de la gomme arabique, de l’encre de la Chine, et de la flanelle d’Angleterre.92

  • 93 For comparison, a specialized worker earned between 300 and 1 000 French pounds per year circa 1780 (...)

40The precision of Coindet’s instructions, the range of colors and supplies involved, together with Rousseau’s astute comments on these points, demonstrate his clear understanding of which colors artists considered “les plus nécessaires”. These intensive discussions in late 1764 to early 1765 as well as in 1767 indicate the time, effort, and expense Rousseau invested in these artistic endeavors. For instance, an accounting sent by D’Ivernois shows that by early January 1765 he had spent a total of 17.6 French pounds (livres) on Rousseau’s behalf.93

Color in Rousseau’s herbaria

  • 94 Marr, op. cit., p. 1005-1006. A paradigmatic case is “Naturselbstdrucke (nature impressions), in wh (...)
  • 95 Rousseau, Confessions, OC, vol. 1, p. 643.
  • 96 “Les herbiers servent de mémoratifs pour [les plantes] qu’on a déjà connues; mais ils font mal conn (...)

41As the repository of once-living plants, the herbarium is where we should expect to see Rousseau’s plant visualization project come to fruition. Indeed, herbarium and other natural history specimens might be paradigmatic “epistemic images” that do not merely illustrate, but can even stand in for, the plants they represent94. If Rousseau cared about seeing the most accurate plant information what could be better than an illustration but the plant itself95? To a degree this is true, but while it preserves actual plants, the herbarium specimen, like the image, is in the final analysis not a complete substitute for the living plant, in Rousseau’s view96. On the other hand, herbarium specimens can be consulted during the winter months, used for comparison, recollection and aesthetic enjoyment, among other purposes.

42An indication of the significance Rousseau attributed to plant color is found in his description of his herbarium-making activities. Tellingly, he characterizes his herbaria as recueils de miniatures”, recalling the portrait-like presentation of one herbarium specimen per page practiced by Linné, and followed by Rousseau (figs. 3, 4, and 5):

  • 97 Rousseau’s characterization of his herbaria as recueils de miniatures recalls the portrait-like p (...)

Dans de grandes et fréquentes herborisations il a fait une immense collection de plantes; il les a desséchées avec des soins infinis; il les a collées avec une grande propreté sur des papiers qu’il ornait de cadres rouges. Il s’est appliqué à conserver la figure et la couleur des fleurs et des feuilles, au point de faire de ces herbiers ainsi préparés des recueils de miniatures.97

43Rousseau left notes with many of his specimens, especially in the herbaria he presented to Julie Boy de la Tour and Madeleine-Catherine Delessert. The notes accompanying the specimens address a variety of issues, including the rarity of the plant in question – a precursor to modern biodiversity studies – the location as well as environment in which it was found. Color certainly is one of the topics treated, if not a predominant one. In the notes to the herbaria given to the Boy de la Tour sisters, we find three explicit references to color, two of which refer regretfully to the loss of color in the dried specimen.

  • 98 My emphasis, Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek, Zurich, Var 12.

44Concerning “Le colchique” (Colchicum autumnale L.), Rousseau notes, “[c]ette plante ne fleurit qu’à la fin de l’Automne. Sa belle fleur gris de Lin qui sort immédiatement de terre sans tige ni feuilles fait un effet charmant dans les Prés qui en sont quelquefois tout garnis” (fig. 3). As for the specimen of “Œil-de-perdrix” (Myostis scorpioides L.), Rousseau notes, “Cette plante a perdu ici la jolie couleur de ses petites fleurs qui sont bleues avec un centre jaune, et même celle de ses feuilles. On l’appelle en Allemagne ne m’oubliez pas, à cause de sa mignardise et de sa petitesse” (fig. 4)98.

  • 99 My emphasis, Herbarium for Madelon (Marguerite-Madeleine) Delessert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmor (...)

45In the herbarium that Rousseau made for Mme Delessert’s daughter, we find the following note concerning “La Cardamine des Prés” (Cardamine pratensis L.): La jolie couleur gris-de-lin de sa fleur se perd absolument de quelque façon qu’on s’y prenne pour la dessecher. Cette plante ne fleurit qu’au commencement du printems dans les hayes des près bas et humides. Ses feuilles radicales sont rondes et peu ou point découpées. Elle a le gout de la roquette / ou du Cresson”99 (fig. 5). Here Rousseau refers not only to color, but to taste, another secondary quality to which he refers in the notes to Regnault, as discussed above.

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

“Le colchique” (Colchicum autumnale L.), Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Var 12 (Zurich), I, 35, 1.

Image: Zentralbibliothek Zürich.

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

“Œil-de-perdrix” (Myosotis scorpioides L.), Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Var 12 (Zurich), I, 12, 1.

Image: Zentralbibliothek Zürich.

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

“La Cardamine des Prés” (Cardamine pratensis L.), Herbarium for Madelon (Marguerite-Madeleine) Delessert, Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmorency, MJJR (Montmorency, Delessert), I, 2001.11.1.25, 1.

Image: Laurent Juillard.

46In addition, there are other indications of how Rousseau integrated considerations of color into his herbaria and transmitted this priority to fellow botanists. For example, as evident in the quote at the head of this article, Rousseau valued Mme Delessert’s care to preserve color when preparing her specimens, while in the letter he addressed to her on herbaria he recommends:

  • 100 My emphasis, Rousseau, Lettres sur la botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1191-1192. Latourrette and Rozier p (...)

Il y a d’abord une provision à faire: savoir cinq ou six mains de papier gris et à peu près autant de papier blanc de même grandeur assez fort et bien collé, sans quoi les plantes se pourriroient dans le papier gris ou du moins les fleurs y perdroient leur couleur, ce qui est une des parties qui les rendent reconnoissables et par lesquelles un herbier est agréable à voir.100

  • 101 My emphasis, Rousseau, Lettres sur la botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1192.

47In addressing in this same letter whether the roots need to be preserved with the specimen, Rousseau observes that “[l]a nature qui a fait tant pour l’élégance et l’ornement dans la figure et la couleur des plantes en ce qui frape les yeux, a destiné les racines uniquement aux fonctions utiles, puisqu’étant cachées dans la terre leur donner une structure agréable eut été cacher la lumière sous le boisseau”101. Color, in other words, could take priority over ordinary roots that did not present any noteworthy feature.

  • 102 Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon. Rousseau’s interest in Rozier’s herbarium is attested by Rozier hi (...)
  • 103 Kusakawa, op. cit., p. 68.
  • 104 Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, D.18912.

48Other color elements in Rousseau’s herbaria included “des papiers qu’il ornait de cadres rouges”, referred to above. These red frames created a striking portrait of the specimen, enhancing the already dramatic presentation of one plant per page stipulated by Linné. An inspiration for these red frames might have been the herbarium of abbé Jean-Baptiste François Rozier (1734-1793), whose impressive ten-volume collection – known to Rousseau – featured red-framed specimens102. Rozier’s use of red ink to frame his specimens could have originated in its use to mark important passages in liturgical, legal and other texts103. This practice could have likewise inspired Rousseau’s use of this color not only to frame specimens, but also to use small red crosses and red letters to link specimens on the right-hand page of his cryptogam herbarium to descriptions on the left-hand page104 (fig. 6).

Fig. 6

Fig. 6

“Bryum undulatum” (Atrichum undulatum (Hedw.) P. Beauv.) (“h”) and “Mnium serpillifolium” (Rhizomnium punctatum (Hedw.) T.J.Kop.) (“k”), D. 912 (Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs), I, 1, fo 3.

Image: Musée des Arts décoratifs.

Conclusion

49I have argued that Rousseau’s botanical œuvre reflects an interest in, and need for, color that speaks against categorizing him, on the basis of well-known anti-colorist comments in the Essai sur l’origine des langues, as an adherent of the “eliminativist” school inspired by Locke, among others. While eliminativism certainly coheres with the primary and secondary qualities distinction represented in botany by Linné’s exclusion of color as well as taste and smell as classificatory characters, Rousseau, as we have seen, does not remain wedded to such restrictions. During his encounter with botany in the mid-1760s he obtains a wide variety of illustrated works, including many from earlier centuries, and seeks uncolored plant images with the intention of coloring them for an optique and possibly other purposes. He likewise valorizes the colors of plants in herbarium specimens.

50Given how Rousseau’s botanical studies have been conventionally understood – as rigidly Linnaean and limited in scope – these color-infused botanical pursuits should come as something of a surprise. Furthermore, in recognizing Rousseau’s appreciation of color in botany, we are compelled, I believe, to re-assess his relationship to color itself, just as Rousseau’s employment of smell and taste in doing botany compels us to re-assess his attitude toward employing senses disregarded by such mainstream authorities as Linné.

  • 105 Rousseau, Essai, OC, vol. 5, p. 419.

51Clearly, the position articulated in the Essai represents only one of the ways in which Rousseau viewed color in relation to form. Given the evidence presented here, it is now clearer than ever that Rousseau could not abide the colorless botany offered up in the works of Linné and many other eighteenth-century treatises. As Rousseau writes in the Essai, “[t]outes les richesses du coloris s’étalent à la fois sur la face de la terre. Du premier coup d’œil tout est vû; mais plus on regarde plus on est enchanté […]”105.

52Having demonstrated that color, as well as taste and scent, figure significantly in the scope of Rousseau’s botanical activities, one is called upon to offer an explanation for this seeming change in attitude. One way to account for Rousseau’s apparently paradoxical preference for the colored botanical image or specimen is to point to its “nonart” or technical status. According to this interpretation, the botanical image is not connected with anything of interest to the imagination, so color may intrude in a useful way. However, since, to my knowledge, Rousseau was silent on the role of imagination in interpreting technical images, it is impossible to have any certainty about his views on this point.

  • 106 Rousseau, Rêveries, OC, vol. 1, p. 1066.

53On the other hand, another, more personal and less philosophically interesting possibility has to be considered: was it perhaps increasingly the case that Rousseau’s “riante, mais languissante”106 imagination could no longer accommodate the uncolored image that “laisse quelque chose à faire à [l’]imagination ?”

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Notes

1 My emphasis, Rousseau to Madeleine-Catherine Delessert, no location, 24 May 1773, Correspondance complète [hereafter CC], ed. Ralph A. Leigh, Geneva, Institut et Musée Voltaire and Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1972-1998, letter no 6993.

2 See Tanja Kleinwächter, Sarah Lowengard and Friedrich Steinle (dir.), Ordering colors in 18th and early 19th century Europe, Cham, Springer, 2023; Renzo Shamey and Rolf G. Kuehni (dir.), Pioneers of color science, Cham, Springer, 2020.

3 Original emphasis, Aurélia Gaillard, L’invention de la couleur par les lumières. De Newton à Goethe, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2024, p. 9.

4 Prussian blue, allegedly created in Prussia c. 1704 and by 1724 available in France, is the textbook example of the creation of a pigment, ending exclusive dependence on natural sources such as plants, minerals, and insects, often at very elevated cost, as in the case of cochineal and lapis lazuli. See Charlotte Guichard, Anne-Solenn Le Hô and Hannah Williams, “Prussian Blue: Chemistry, commerce, and colour in eighteenth-century Paris”, Art history, vol. 46, no 1, p. 154-186 (online, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.12695).

5 Anna Marie Roos, “Philosophy and Science”, A Cultural history of color in the Age of Enlightenment, Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf (dir.), London, Bloomsbury Academic (online, http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474206204.ch-001). For the afterlife of Newton’s color theory, see Bernard Maitte, “Les couleurs en physique au xviiie siècle: Débats autour du renversement de leur statut par Newton”, Dix-huitième siècle, 2019, n51, p. 93-109 (online, https://doi.org/10.3917/dhs.051.0093).

6 Charlotte Guichard, “La question du coloris. Palettes et tableaux: Des laboratoires de la couleur?”, Dix-huitième siècle, 2019, no 51, p. 190. Sir Isaac Newton, Traité d’optique sur les réflexions, réfractions, inflexions, et les couleurs, de la Lumière, trans. Pierre Coste, Amsterdam, P. Humbert, 1720.

7 “[…] chaque couleur est déterminée par l’angle de réfraction du rayon qui la donne […]”. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, ed. J. Starobinski, Œuvres complètes [hereafter OC], Paris, Gallimard, vol. 5, 1995, p. 420). Emile contains no reference to Newton’s optical theories; similarly, in Rousseau’s correspondence we find only two references to Newton, neither of which concerns Opticks.

8 “Depuis l’Antiquité, les théoriciens et les critiques d’art considèrent en effet ‘le dessin’ comme la partie noble de la peinture. C’est lui qui est capable de raconter des histoires tandis que le coloris n’est que quelque chose d’accidentel, une partie supplémentaire”. (Zsófia Szúr, “La querelle du coloris en France au xviie siècle”, Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila József Nominatae: Acta romanica, 2010, p. 65-72). In the sixteenth century Michelangelo and Raphael upheld the superiority of form, while Titian and Veronese upheld color as the leading element of painting. This issue was revisited in the late seventeenth century in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, when the Poussinists, advocates of dessin, debated the Rubenists, advocates of the primacy of color. In relation to the Poussinist position, see David Batchelor, Chromophobia, London, Reaktion Books, 2001.

9 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 413. “C’est ainsi que la dialectique de Rousseau comporte l’implication quelque peu scandaleuse que l’art de l’estampe est foncièrement supérieur à l’art de la peinture”. (Philip Robinson, “Rousseau et l’estampe : mieux qu’un art visuel”, dans Frédéric S. Eigeldinger (dir.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les arts visuels, Actes du colloque de Neuchâtel (20-22 septembre 2001), Annales de la société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vol. 45, 2003, p. 309). The Essai’s estimated composition occurred sometime during the years 1756-1761. See Christophe Martin, “Des pouvoirs de la couleur dans La Nouvelle Héloïse”, Dix-huitième siècle, vol. 51, 2019, p. 322 (online, https://doi.org/10.3917/dhs.051.0321). This would mean the Essai was composed no more than ten years before Rousseau’s plant color visualizations, discussed below.

10 Jakob Heinrich Meister to Johann Heinrich Meister, Bern, 1 June 1764, CC, no 3311. While Rousseau’s comments are reported second-hand, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of Meister fils’ report. It is worth noting the close proximity in time between these reported comments and Rousseau’s colored plant visualizations, discussed below.

11 James Elkins, The Domain of images, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1999, p. 3-12. See also Alexander Marr, “Review essay: Knowing images”, Renaissance quarterly, 2016, 69, Cambridge University Press, p. 1000-1013.

12 See e.g. Kärin Nickelsen, Draughtsmen, botanists and nature: The construction of eighteenth-century botanical illustrations, Archimedes: New studies in the history and philosophy of science and technology, 15, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006. A pertinent example of a botanical draughtswoman is Geneviève de Nangis Regnault, who illustrated her husband’s texts in Nicolas François Regnault, La Botanique mise à la portée de tout le monde ou collection des plantes d’usage dans la médecine, dans les alimens et dans les arts: avec des notices instructives puisées dans les auteurs les plus célèbres, contenant la description, le climât, la culture, les propriétés et les vertus propres à chaque plante, précedé d’une introduction à la botanique, ou dictionnaire abrégé des principaux termes emploiés dans cette science, 2 vols., Paris, chez l’auteur, 1774.

13 This distinction was already mooted in Antiquity. From the outset color figured in a debate centered on which properties inhere in matter; those inhering in matter are known as “primary qualities” while those not inhering in matter are called “secondary qualities”. To be apprehensible, the latter, including color, may depend on particular conditions, e.g. the amount of light.

14 For Rousseau’s critical engagement with Locke’s works, see Johanna Lenne-Cornuez and Céline Spector, Rousseau et Locke: Dialogues critiques, Liverpool, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press, 2022.

15 See Matthew Stuart, “Locke’s colors”, The Philosophical review, 112, 1, January 2003, p. 57-96.

16 Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 421.

17 My emphasis, ibid., p. 413.

18 Emily Dolan, The Orchestral Revolution: Haydn and the technologies of timbre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 24.

19 Rousseau, Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, vol. 5, p. 419.

20 Carl von Linné, Philosophia botanica, Stockholm, G. Kiesewetter, 1751, sec. 167.

21 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Fragments de botanique, ed. Roger de Vilmorin, OC, vol. 4, p. 1249. See also Takuya Kobayashi, Écrits sur la botanique de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Édition critique, PhD thesis, Neuchâtel, 2012, p. 59. Traditionally, the senses of smell and taste had been considered inferior to those of sight and hearing. However, the “sensory turn” has opened up new avenues of historical inquiry concerning these disregarded senses. Beatrijs Vanacker and Lieke van Deinsen, “Introduction”, Taste and smell in the (long) eighteenth century, special issue of De Achttiende Eeuw, 48, 2016, no 1-2, 3-12. Concerning Rousseau’s use of smell in botany, see Timothée Léchot, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre et la ‘botanique de l’odorat’”, in Claire Jaquier and Timothée Léchot (dir.), Rousseau botaniste. « Je vais devenir plante moi-même. » Recueil d’articles et catalogue d’exposition, Fleurier and Pontarlier, Éditions du Belvédère, 2012, p. 57-66. Regarding the sense of taste, Rousseau refers eleven times to “goût/gout” in his annotations of Nicolas François and Geneviève de Nangis Regnault, op. cit. Rousseau organized this originally unpaginated work in Linnaean order. The annotations were transcribed by Valérie Munch.

22 My emphasis, Rousseau to Mme Delessert, Paris, 18 October 1771; CC, no 6898.

23 An apparent colorlessness in Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse is belied by an “esthétique de suggestion”. (Martin, op. cit., p. 327).

24 Ursula Klein and Emma Spary (dir.), Materials and expertise in early-modern Europe: Between market and laboratory, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2010; Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the artisan: Art and experience in the Scientific Revolution, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2004; Pamela H. Smith, et al. (dir.), The Matter of art, Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 2015; Pamela O. Long, Artisan/practitioners and the rise of the new sciences, 1400-1600, Corvallis, Oregon State University Press, 2011.

25 Concerning color in Rousseau’s early botanical studies, see Alexandra Cook, “Jean-Jacques s’initie à la botanique: Science et art dans le manuscrit des ‘Plantes herborisées avec M. Neuhaus’”, Bulletin de la société neuchâteloise des sciences naturelles, 139, December 2019, p. 5-44. See also Anne Deneys-Tunney, Un autre Rousseau: Le paradoxe de la technique, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2010, and Angelica Goodden, Rousseau’s hand: The crafting of a writer, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.

26 Such concerns persist in Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, which use plant materials rather than replicated phyto-chemicals synthesized in laboratories.

27 See e.g. Samir Boumediene, La colonisation du savoir. Une histoire des plantes médicinales du “Nouveau Monde” (1492-1750), Vaulx-en-Velin, Les Éditions des mondes à faire, 2016, p. 193. In a recent case, one hundred people needed life-long dialysis due to kidney damage caused by a toxic plant that shares the name of a TCM plant. K. J. Wills (ed.), State of the World’s Plants 2017: Report, Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens, 2017, p. 281.

28 Jules Janick and John Stolarczyk, “Ancient Greek illustrated Dioscoridean herbals: Origins and impact of the Juliana Anicia Codex and the Codex Neopolitanus”, Notulae botanicae horti agrobotanici Cluj-Napoca, 2012, 40, 1, p. 9-17 (https://doi.org/10.15835/nbha4017767).

29 Quentin Hiernaux and Corentin Tresnie, Andrea Cesalpino’s De Plantis Libri XVI (1583) and the Transformation of medical botany in the 16th century: Edition, translation, and commentary on Book I, Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter, 2023, p. 47-48.

30 Carl von Linné, Genera plantarum, 2nd ed., Leiden, C. Wishoff, 1742, p. viii.

31 See e.g. Sam George, Botany, sexuality and women’s writing 1760-1830: From modest shoot to forward plant, Manchester, University of Manchester Press, 2007, p. 50-51; Roger L. Williams, Botanophilia in eighteenth-century France: The spirit of the Enlightenment, Dordrecht, Springer, 2001, p. 95; Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s body: Gender in the making of modern science, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1994, p. 12; Pascal Duris, Linné et la France, Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1993, p. 105. Cf. my arguments for Rousseau as a taxonomic pluralist open to a wide variety of classifications and viewpoints in Alexandra Cook, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and botany: The salutary science, Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2012.

32 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, OC, vol. 1, 1959, p. 643. On the move away from images, see Brian W. Ogilvie, “Image and text in natural history, 1500-1700”, in Wolfgang Lefèvre, et al. (dir.), The Power of images in early modern science, Basel, 2003, p. 141-166. See also Pierre-Yves Lacour, “De la divergence art/science. L’image naturaliste entre 1720 et 1820”, Études sur le xviiie siècle, 2015, vol. 42, special issue, “Écrire les sciences”, Martial Guédron and Isabelle Laboulais (dir.), p. 193-207.

33 Rousseau refers to London botanist and apothecary, James Petiver (1663-1718), whose works had recently been posthumously published.

34 In this context “caractéristique” refers to the specific characters relied upon in a particular system of classification, in this case Linné’s artificial sexual system.

35 My emphasis, Rousseau to Margaret Harley Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, Wootton Hall, 12 February 1767, CC, no 5725.

36 My emphasis, Rousseau to Daniel Malthus, no location, 2 January 1767, CC, no 5655.

37 See e.g. Cook, op. cit., p. 147-148.

38 This largely ignored aspect of Rousseau’s botanical knowledge is confirmed by the detailed inventory of his book acquisitions as well as those he aspired to purchase in Cook, op. cit., Chapter vii and Appendix I, p. 351-380.

39 “Il peut cependant s’en trouver d’Anglais comme Parkinson et le Gerard […] que peut être n’avez-vous pas. Le Valerius Cordus est assez rare ; j’avais aussi Tragus, mais je l’ai donné à M. Clappier.” (Rousseau to Latourrette, Monquin, 26 January 1770; CC, no 6655). Space constraints preclude an in-depth discussion of Rousseau’s Renaissance book collection and his reception of this vast literature. This subject will be treated in a forthcoming publication, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau as a consumer of Renaissance botanical literature”.

40 Rousseau to Pierre Guy, London, 20 January 1766, CC, no 4994.

41 Rousseau, “Annotations”, op. cit.

42 Ibid., s.v. “L’Herbe aux cuillers, ou cochléaria”. Rousseau likewise criticizes Regnault’s suggestion of eating this plant as salad: “Une salade de Cochlearia doit être une chose immangeable”, no 230 in Rousseau’s version.

43 Ibid., s.v.Le Tamaris, ou Tamarisc”, no 115 in Rousseau’s version.

44 Sachiko Kusakawa, Picturing the book of nature: Image, text, and argument in sixteenth-century human anatomy and medical botany, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2012, p. 33, relying on David Woodward, Maps as prints in the Italian Rennaissance: Makers, distributors, and consumers, London, British Library, 1996, p. 33.

45 Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen, “A Woodblock’s career: Transferring visual botanical knowledge in the early modern Low Countries”, Nuncius, 35, 2020, p. 20-63.

46 The high cost of engravings did not deter the Neapolitan botanist Fabio Colonna (1567-1650), whose engravings were based on nature prints he probably did himself. Federico Tognoni, “Nature described: Fabio Colonna and natural history illustration”, Nuncius, 20, 2005, p. 347-370 (https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-03203005). Notably, Colonna ranked among the botanists whose works Rousseau was keen to acquire. Rousseau to Chrétien Guillaume Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Paris, 19 January 1772; CC, no 6924; Rousseau to Antoine Gouan, Monquin, 6 October 1769; CC, no 6620.

47 Kusakawa, op. cit., p. 71-75 (the page spread is due to three pages of illustrations inserted into the text).

48 François-Alexandre-Pierre de Garsault, Les Figures de plantes et animaux d’usage en médecine, décrits dans la “Matière médicale” de M. Geoffroy […] dessinés d’après nature par M. de Garsault, 6 vols., Paris, Didot le jeune, 1764-1765.

49 My emphasis, Rousseau to Nicolas Bonaventure Duchesne, Môtiers, 16 December 1764, CC, no 3746.

50 As discussed in Smith, op. cit., passim.

51 See Alexandra Cook, “An idea ahead of its time: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s mobile botanical laboratory”, in Marianne Klemun and Ulrike Spring (dir.), Expeditions as experiments: Practising observation and documentation, Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, p. 27-49.

52 My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, ed. Bernard Gagnebin et Marcel Raymond (ed.), in OC, vol. 1, 1959, p. 180. To achieve the desired effect, such “washes [lavis]” employ ink such as indelible “encre de la chine” (also “encre de Chine”): “une composition en pain ou en bâton, qui délayée avec de l’eau ou de la gomme arabique, & quelquefois un peu de bistre ou de sanguine, sert à tracer & laver les desseins”. ENCRE DE LA CHINE, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres, vol. 5, 1765, p. 634, Édition numérique collaborative et critique de l’Encyclopédie (1751-1772), Paris, Académie des sciences [hereafter, Encyclopédie] (online, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie/article/v5-1242-2, accessed on May 21, 2025).

53 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile ou de l’éducation, ed. Charles Wirz and Pierre Burgelin, OC, vol. 4, p. 396.

54 Ibid., p. 407.

55 My emphasis, Rousseau, Emile, OC, vol. 4, p. 398.

56 My emphasis, Rousseau, Essai, OC, vol. 5, p. 419. Castel seems to have attempted the reverse: to put the ear in the eye, hoping his picture-music could enable the deaf to hear music.

57 Rousseau to Jean-André Deluc, 20 December 1764; CC, no 3755. The optique, which later provided a metaphor for the pleasures afforded to Rousseau by his herbarium, was thus already linked to botany: “Cet herbier est pour moi un journal d’herborisations qui me les fait recommencer avec un nouveau charme et produit l’effet d’une optique qui les peindrait derechef à mes yeux”. My emphasis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. Marcel Raymond, OC, vol. 1, p. 1073.

58 Jean-André Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 December 1764; CC, no 3744. In response to Deluc, Rousseau offers the following clarification: “C’est effectivement un[e] Optique telle que vous le décrivez dont nous avions parlé. Je n’aime point celles qui restant toutes ouvertes laissent de toutes parts entrer la lumiére et présentent avec l’image les objets environnants. Vous me parlâtes d’une maniére d’enclorre tellement l’image dans la boete par une espéce de Quadre noir qu’on ne vit absolument que l’estampe. Voila […] ce que je desirerois […].” (Rousseau to Jean-André Deluc, 20 December 1764, Môtiers, CC, no 3755). Voir aussi François Henri D’Ivernois to Rousseau, Geneva, 14 December 1764, CC, no 3738; D’Ivernois to Rousseau, Geneva, 4 January 1765; CC, no 3833, and Rousseau to D’Ivernois, Môtiers, 20 July 1765, CC, n4536. See also Claude Lamboley, “Les Peepshows: Distractions de salons, spectacles de rue et jouets d’enfant”, Bulletin de l’Académie des Sciences et Lettres de Montpellier, 49, 2018, p. 6.

59 D’Ivernois repeatedly assured Rousseau that any of the needed pigments could be sent to Môtiers from Geneva. D’Ivernois to Rousseau, 28 December 1764, Geneva, CC, no 3790; 9 January 1765, Geneva, CC, no 3856.

60 Deluc fils, who became an accomplished savant, was a son of the watchmaker and political activist, Jacques-Francois “le bonhomme” Deluc (1698-1780).

61 Deluc’s comment is perplexing, given that miniatures were a type of very small portrait. See e.g. Karin Schrader, “‘Telling Objects’ – Miniatures as an Interactive Medium in Eighteenth-Century Female European Court Portraits”Études Épistémè, 36, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.5399). On the other hand, the high cost of ultramarine, derived from lapis lazuli, could have motivated Deluc’s exclusion of this color from the “boëte” he sent Rousseau. OUTREMER (Chimie & Peinture), Encyclopédie, vol. 11, 1765, p. 719 (online, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie/article/v11-2054-0, accessed on May 21, 2025).

62 Since empty shells were used to hold paints, they retained pigment traces useful in identifying the color to be purchased.

63 My emphasis, Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 December 1764, CC, no 3744. In the eighteenth century a droguiste dealt in dry goods such as spices, plant materials, and color pigments. See Littré, s.v. “drogue”: “Les étymologistes anglais tirent drug de l’anglo-saxon dryge, sec ; Frisch et Diez tirent le mot roman du hollandais trook, sec (dryge et trook sont le même mot) ; de sorte que la drogue serait la chose séchée, la plante séchée, etc.”

64 This comment attests to Rousseau’s ability to judge the raw materials of painting based, in all likelihood, on previous experience and/or informally-transmitted technical-artisanal knowledge.

65 “Florentine, or Chinese, and all Red Lakes of a solid colour are extracted from Cochineal [an insect], Kermes, or Madder. Massoul (Pierre-Barthélemy-Marie-Reine-Joseph-Alexandre de Constant de Massoul, A Treatise on the art of painting, and the composition of colour, containing instructions for all the various processes of painting; together with observations upon the qualities and ingredients of colours. Translated from the French of M. Constant de Massoul, London, T. Baylis, 1797)”, Painters’ Palettes from Historical Writings: An Intermedia Website (https://painterspalettes.net/18th-century-colour-palettes, accessed on May 21, 2025). According to Lowengard, an original French version of the Treatise may never have existed. See Sarah Lowengard, The Creation of color in eighteenth-century Europe, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008: (online, http://www.gutenberg-e.org/lowengard/C_Chap11.html, accessed on May 21, 2025); Neil Jeffares, “Constant de Massoul: Soldier, émigré and colourman”, Fairness, candour & curiosity – from finance to art history, 11 February 2017 (online, https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/constant-de-massoul-soldier-emigre-and-colourman, accessed on May 21, 2025).

66 Cf. Deluc’s claim above that Rousseau would not need this color. Deluc to Rousseau, no location, 15 December 1764, CC, n3744.

67 Rousseau’s usage of “verd de Vessie [bladder green]” is yet another instance of informal knowledge transmission among artisans and other adepts: “Cette expression paraît inconnue aux lexicographes du xviiie siècle. Elle est pourtant attestée dès 1640: voir Littré, s.v. vert, 12o: nom donné dans le commerce à une sorte de couleur verte qu’il reçoit ordinairement enfermée dans des vessies, et qui est extrait des baies mûres du nerprun des teinturiers (rhamnées)”. (Ralph A. Leigh, note 3, CC, n3846).

68 My emphasis, Rousseau to Deluc, Môtiers, 20 December 1764, CC, no 3755. As the manuscript of this letter is in private hands, it is not possible to verify whether Leigh’s transcription, “verd de gris [English: ‘verdigris’]”, is accurate, as it is easily confused with “verd d’iris”, the green color Rousseau mentioned in MsR 21, fol. 45 verso.

69 See note above concerning “Encre de la Chine”.

70 My emphasis, Rousseau to Deluc, Môtiers, 20 December 1764, CC, no 3755.

71 On the role of lists in knowledge creation, see James Delbourgo and Staffan Müller-Wille, “Focus: Listmania – Introduction”, Isis, 103, 4, 2012, p. 710-715. On the role of “paper and ink tools”, see Staffan Müller-Wille, “Linnaean paper tools”, in Helen A. Curry, et al. (dir.), Worlds of natural history, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 205-220.

72 We do not know if Rousseau wrote the list while in the field with Neuhaus or afterwards. There is no other concrete information available about the circumstances of the “Herborisation” in question.

73Pigment” is generally understood to refer to a solid material that once combined with water, or gums can be prepared into colors either alone or in mixtures with other pigments.

74 “These are all standard watercolor pigments in this period; the gommes are used as mediums, plasticizers or occasional masking. The range of colours seems tailored in particular to botanical representation and its situated, amateur practice.” (Personal communication, Alicia Weisberg-Roberts).

75 MsR 21, fol. 45 verso, also published in Fragments de botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1254. Given that this list appears on the same page as the second page of “Liste des plantes herborisées avec M. Neuhaus”, it may possibly date from Spring or Summer 1765. Cook, op. cit., 2019, p. 7, n. 6.

76 Rousseau clearly writes “Verd d’iris”, not to be confused with a different color, “vert de gris”, in Rousseau to Deluc, Môtiers, 20 December 1764, CC, no 3755.

77 “Vermilion is artificial cinnabar. The latter is found in mercury mines and the former is made by mixing mercury with sulphur and subliming this mixture, which is found at the top of a vessel as a hard mass in long needles inclining a little towards a violet-brown. This latter should be selected when in good stones, is very heavy, bright, and well-shaped in long needles, and has a good red colour. When it has been ground for a long time, it is reduced to a fine powder and gives one of the most beautiful red colours that exists. Watin [Jean-Félix Watin, L’Art du Peintre, Doreur & Vernisseur, 2nd edition, Paris, Grangé, 1773]”, Painters’ Palettes from historical writings: An Intermedia website (online, https://painterspalettes.net/18th-century-colour-palettes, accessed on May 21, 2025).

78 “Ce mot de lacque s’est ensuite étendu à un grand nombre d’autres pâtes séches, ou poudres de différentes couleurs, & teintes avec des matieres bien différentes. Ainsi la lacque fine de Venise est une pâte faite avec de la cochenille mesteque qui reste après qu’on en a tiré le premier carmin”. Emphasis original, Louis de Jaucourt, LACQUE (Histoire naturelle des Drogues, Arts, Chimie), Encyclopédie, vol. 9, 1765, p. 169 (online, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie/article/v9-643-0, accessed on May 21, 2025). For further discussion of the many types of lacquer, see Cheng He, “Understanding the fragrance of lacquer in early modern Europe”, Wollesen Proceedings, University of Toronto Art Journal, vol. 9, no 1, 2021, p. 168.

79 See Guichard, et al., op. cit.

80 Cf. Deluc’s 15 December 1764 letter stating that ultramarine was not essential for “miniatures”.

81 “Cette couleur jaune que donne le stil de grain est fort susceptible par le mélange des qualités des autres couleurs. Quand on mêle le stil de grain avec du brun rouge, on en fait une couleur des plus terrestres ; mais si on la joint avec du blanc ou du bleu, on en tire une couleur des plus fuyantes”. My emphasis, Jaucourt, STIL DE GRAIN, Encyclopédie, vol. 15, p. 520 (online, http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie/page/v5-p665, accessed on May 21, 2025).

82 In his letter of 20 December, quoted above, Deluc refers to used painters’ shells to show the druggist the color in question.

83 For example, Ferdinand Bauer (1760-1826) used thirty pigments in his illustrations (prepared 1786-1794) for John Sibthorp’s Flora Graeca, 10 vols., London, Richard Taylor & Co. and John White, 1806-1840. See Jane Jelley, “Unlocking the paintbox: The hidden meaning of Ferdinand Bauer’s colour codes for the Flora Graeca”, The Linnean, 39, 2, September 2023, p. 22. On the other hand, the documents examined as the basis for the color list enumerated at Painters’ Palettes from Historical Writings: An Intermedia Website (online, https://painterspalettes.net/18th-century-colour-palettes, accessed on May 21, 2025), yield 150 colors, of which some names undoubtedly overlap.

84 My emphasis, Sarah Lowengard, op. cit. (online, http://www.gutenberg-e.org/lowengard/C_Chap06.html, accessed on May 21, 2025); on color reference systems, see André Karliczek, “Materialisation of vision: Colour standards in the early sciences, handicrafts, and arts”, in Kleinwächter, et al. (dir.), op. cit., p. 51.

85 This point was noted at the time. See Patrice Bret, “Traduire les couleurs: Madame Picardet, le Président de Virly, la minéralogie wernerienne et les palettes chromatiques allemandes”, Dix-huitième siècle, 2019, no 51, p. 249-250 ; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Introduction”. Fragmens pour un dictionnaire des termes d’usage en botanique, ed. Roger de Vilmorin, OC, vol. 4, p. 1207.

86 Karliczek, op. cit.

87 Rousseau, Rêveries, OC, vol. 1, p. 1069-1070. Regarding botanical topics Rousseau discussed with correspondents, see Cook, op. cit.

88 The latter work appeared in Mme Picardet’s 1790 translation, Traité des caractères extérieurs des fossiles, which significantly influenced French color terminology. Bret, op. cit., p. 237.

89 This point is discussed by Bret. Ibid., p. 237.

90 During his stay in England, Rousseau disposed of hundreds of books, apart from those concerning botany, with the assistance of his host at Wootton Hall (Staffordshire), Richard Davenport (d. 1771). Several letters from Rousseau to Davenport attest to this arrangement, but do not clarify which of these books Davenport acquired. See e.g. Rousseau to Richard Davenport, Wootton, 21 February 1767, CC no 5738. According to one account, Davenport acquired Rousseau’s Encyclopédie volumes, while the diplomat and man of letters Louis Dutens (1730-1812) acquired the other works in question. See Danielle Jung, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Livres, lecture, bibliothèque, mémoire, École nationale supérieure de bibliothèques, 1979, p. 56.

91 It is not known at this writing if such a “machine” for mixing colors was in general use or was Coindet’s own invention. Colors were usually mixed using a mortar and pestle or extra-hard stones as porphyry. Enquiries on this point are ongoing.

92 The “flanelle d’Angleterre” was for “Camisolles”. Coindet to Rousseau, no location, 4 November 1767, CC, no 6113.

93 For comparison, a specialized worker earned between 300 and 1 000 French pounds per year circa 1780-1790. The author thanks Timothée Léchot for this information.

94 Marr, op. cit., p. 1005-1006. A paradigmatic case is “Naturselbstdrucke (nature impressions), in which natural objects themselves are used to produce an exact, printed replica, thus meeting [Lorraine] Daston’s criteria for an epistemic image”.

95 Rousseau, Confessions, OC, vol. 1, p. 643.

96 “Les herbiers servent de mémoratifs pour [les plantes] qu’on a déjà connues; mais ils font mal connoitre celles qu’on n’a pas vues auparavant.” (Rousseau, Lettres sur la botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1191).

97 Rousseau’s characterization of his herbaria as recueils de miniatures recalls the portrait-like presentation of one herbarium specimen per page practiced by Linné, Rousseau and others. My emphasis, Rousseau, Dialogues, ed. Robert Osmont, OC, vol. 1, p. 832. Another interpretation of the small herbarium (“herbier portatif”) as “miniature” is given in Timothée Léchot, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les présents botaniques: l’éloquence muette des herbiers”, Revue historique neuchâteloise, vol. 149, no 3-4, 2012, p. 221-240.

98 My emphasis, Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek, Zurich, Var 12.

99 My emphasis, Herbarium for Madelon (Marguerite-Madeleine) Delessert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmorency, Ms 2001-11-1.

100 My emphasis, Rousseau, Lettres sur la botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1191-1192. Latourrette and Rozier present what they claim to be a novel method of preserving color using “sablon fin”. (Marc Antoine Flerieu de Claret de La Tourrette and Jean Baptiste François Rozier, Démonstrations élémentaires de botanique pour l’usage de l’école vétérinaire, 2 vols., Lyon, Jean-Marie Bruyset, 1766, p. 234-244).

101 My emphasis, Rousseau, Lettres sur la botanique, OC, vol. 4, p. 1192.

102 Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon. Rousseau’s interest in Rozier’s herbarium is attested by Rozier himself, who had Rousseau’s “portrait en medaillon, dessiné et modelé pendant qu’il feuilletait mon herbier lors du séjour qu’il fit à Lyon” (Jean-Baptiste François Rozier to René Louis Girardin, Paris, 17 July 1778, CC, no 7119). Rozier was renowned for his editorship of the Journal de physique, his collaboration with La Tourrette on the botanical garden of the Lyon École vétérinaire and co-authoring La Tourrette and Rozier, op. cit.

103 Kusakawa, op. cit., p. 68.

104 Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, D.18912.

105 Rousseau, Essai, OC, vol. 5, p. 419.

106 Rousseau, Rêveries, OC, vol. 1, p. 1066.

Haut de page

Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1
Légende MsR21, fol. 45, verso, Neuchâtel, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire. In the upper right, we see three plant names, possibly belonging to the list of plants collected in 1765 with Samuel Frédéric Neuhaus, the city doctor of Neuchâtel. Below, we see a list of « Couleurs à se fournir », presumably intended for coloring plant engravings.
Crédits Image: Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aes/docannexe/image/8471/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 462k
Titre Fig. 2
Légende Color wheel (“Ordnung der Farbenclasse”) illustrating twelve colors from Ignaz Schiffermüller, Versuch eines Farbensystems (1772), p. 15. Wikimedia Commons. Note the prism experiment in the lower left corner, clearly a reference to Newton’s contributions to the field.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aes/docannexe/image/8471/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 171k
Titre Fig. 3
Légende “Le colchique” (Colchicum autumnale L.), Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Var 12 (Zurich), I, 35, 1.
Crédits Image: Zentralbibliothek Zürich.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aes/docannexe/image/8471/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 756k
Titre Fig. 4
Légende “Œil-de-perdrix” (Myosotis scorpioides L.), Herbarium for Julie Boy de la Tour-Willading, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Var 12 (Zurich), I, 12, 1.
Crédits Image: Zentralbibliothek Zürich.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aes/docannexe/image/8471/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 898k
Titre Fig. 5
Légende “La Cardamine des Prés” (Cardamine pratensis L.), Herbarium for Madelon (Marguerite-Madeleine) Delessert, Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmorency, MJJR (Montmorency, Delessert), I, 2001.11.1.25, 1.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/aes/docannexe/image/8471/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 572k
Titre Fig. 6
Légende “Bryum undulatum” (Atrichum undulatum (Hedw.) P. Beauv.) (“h”) and “Mnium serpillifolium” (Rhizomnium punctatum (Hedw.) T.J.Kop.) (“k”), D. 912 (Paris, Musée des Arts décoratifs), I, 1, fo 3.
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Alexandra Cook, « Epistemology, techniques, and artisanal knowledge »Arts et Savoirs [En ligne], 24 | 2025, mis en ligne le 15 juillet 2025, consulté le 13 mai 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/aes/8471 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14can

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Alexandra Cook

University of Hong Kong

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