LOUIS EDOUART MAUBERT (FRENCH, 1806-1879)
“Uropendium lindenii (now called Phragmipedium lindenii)”
Drawn as preparatory work for Jean Jules Linden’s Pescatorea – Iconographie des Orchidées, Brussels, 1855 – 1860
Pencil, watercolor on paper and card
Inscribed and signed “Maubert pinx”
Brussels, 1854-1860
Paper size approx: 13 3/8 x 17 7/8 in.

This rare South American lady slipper orchid is native to Venezuela, Colombia, and the Imbabura, Pichincha, Tungurahua, and Chimborazo provinces of Ecuador and Peru. It is an epiphyte and grows primarily in the wet tropical biome.

Maubert’s drawing renders Uropendium lindenii (now called Phragmipedium lindenii), highlighting the dangling ribbon petals, framed by delicate pencil studies of buds and details left uncolored at the margins.

The artist’s focus matches the author’s enthusiasm for the species, as he may have known the special meaning this plant held for Linden, who discovered it while exploring the territory of the Chiguara Indians of Colombia in 1843. He noted it growing at an altitude of about 5,500 feet in small thickets among high ferns on a plateau overlooking forests between Lake Maracaibo and the Mérida cordillera. This orchid had its first European flowering in 1850 at Pescatore’s garden. The accompanying text dedicates much to the flower’s extraordinary structure: “The petals of Uropedium Lindenii are like narrow, long ribbons,” with lengths of approximately 21 ½ inches, when spread, the species stands more over 3 feet high. The ribboned petals emerge after the flower opens, with the full cycle taking about twelve days, and each flower lasts five to six weeks.

Linden’s entry also records the botanist Adolphe Brongniart’s cautious hypothesis that the plant might prove to be a “monstrous variety” of an unknown Cypripedium allied to Cypripedium caudatum. Modern botanical scholarship considers this plant as a naturally occurring peloric form now placed in Phragmipedium. The corresponding lithograph is signed “Detollenaere lith.” alone; as Dieschburg observes of this very sheet, “The drawing, however, unmistakably reads Maubert pinx.” The watercolor thus confirms the artist of one of the book’s most famous images.

From a collection of fourteen unique watercolor compositions by French botanical painter Louis Edouart Maubert, prepared for Jean Jules Linden’s work, Pescatorea – Iconographie des Orchidées (Iconography of Orchids), issued in parts from 1854-1860.

Pescatorea is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished nineteenth-century florilegia dedicated to orchids.This is the most substantial group of drawings known for the work. They have recently been brought to scholarly attention by Bob Dieschburg, librarian to the Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg, whose 2026 study in Hémecht publishes a selection of the watercolors for the first time and reconstructs the production history of the book, revealing how scientific botany was translated into luxury printed works at the height of European orchidomania.

Jean Jules Linden (1817-1898), born in Luxembourg, moved to Belgium in his youth and later became one of the century’s most significant plant explorers. He was “An orchid hunter par excellence … [and] was the first to search the mountain regions diligently for his orchids. In doing so, he obtained many cool-temperature plants for his sponsors in Belgium. After ten years in the Western Hemisphere, Linden returned to work in Brussels in 1845. With his son Lucien, he founded Horticulture Internationale, the first major commercial competitor of the British orchid house Messrs. Sander.” Over the course of his career, Linden imported more than 1,100 orchid species, and his firsthand knowledge of the plants in their Andean and Asian habitats made Pescatorea’s texts an authority few contemporary flower books could match.

The work was named in honor of Jean-Pierre Pescatore (1793-1855) of La Celle Saint-Cloud, the Luxembourg-born soldier, tobacco merchant, and banker who ranked among the earliest and most passionate orchid gardeners in Europe. In 1844, Pescatore purchased the Château de La Celle Saint-Cloud in the Yvelines, where, with his wife and the Buhler brothers, he transformed the grounds with a riding school, an orangery, an avenue of exotic trees, and the celebrated orchid houses which grew the rare species that were celebrated in the resultant book. Linden wrote that his patron and client maintained “la plus riche collection d’Orchidées du continent” (the richest collection of orchids on the continent), a claim borne out by the collection’s international renown: even receiving visitors from the French court who were eager to study the new specimen plants grown in hothouses.

Additional details available on request.