White and Purple Roses, Watercolour on Vellum, Circle White and Purple Roses, Watercolour on Vellum, French School, Circle of Redouté's Pupils, 19th Centuryof Redouté's Pupils, 19th Century

The two roses are given entirely different whites. The upper flower is carried in lilac and cool grey with a hot pink heart, the lower one in cream, straw and beige without a touch of pure white anywhere. Between them the leaves turn, showing blue-grey undersides against the green of their faces.

Watercolour and graphite on vellum, 10 x 8 inches (27 x 21.5 cm), 16 x 13 inches (41 x 33 cm) framed, unsigned, French, second quarter of the nineteenth century, laid on a tension support and set in a gilt frame with a linen slip.

The drawing is the work of someone who counted. Each thorn on the canes is placed singly, with its own shaded base and its point turned the way it grows, and the secondary veins of every leaf are followed one by one rather than suggested. A fine graphite line runs under the watercolour along the petal edges and the stems, laid in before any colour was brushed. The vellum takes the pigment on its surface instead of drawing it into the fibre, which is what gives the flowers their chalky bloom and keeps the greens from sinking.

Vellum, and why it was chosen
Paper was cheap and available by this date, and a flower painter who bought vellum instead was buying a support that holds colour on its surface and can be worked wet without cockling. It was the material of botanical illustration proper, used for plates that had to be exact enough to identify a plant from, and choosing it says the drawing was made to be looked at as a record and not as a decoration.

The frame is a moulded gilt profile with a linen slip, of recent manufacture.

The vellum is clean and evenly toned, laid flat on its tension support, with light handling marks at the edges.