André Dupont (1742-1817), is the first rose collector we know of. From 1785 onwards, he developed a passion for this beautiful genus, striving to have a garden where he could produce his Roses and observe them, in Paris, mainly in the surroundings of the Luxembourg Palace. He was not a horticulturist, so he immersed himself in the books lent to him by the National Museum of Natural History, met botanists, erudite men of the Enlightenment, gardeners and nurserymen. He thus became a good connoisseur of the Roses of his time, planning to write a monograph. At the beginning of the 19th century, the fashion for roses began, and André Dupont made a major contribution to this development; he was its forerunner. Madame Bonaparte, Empress Joséphine, brought him great fame, as she turned him into her main supplier of roses to embellish the greenhouses and flowerbeds of her estate in Malmaison. Renowned as the depositary of a complete École de Roses and of the oddities that nature provides them with, he gathered the very first herbarium exclusively devoted to Roses that we may still consult. In 1814, Dupont was at the end of his life and gave his collection to the Luxembourg Gardens. It was the beginning of the largest rose garden in the world that one could admire during most of the 19th century. He could thus observe the flowering of his beloved Roses for two or three more seasons, before passing away not far from them. While his botanist friends, or famous horticulturists, were collecting fame and honours, he ended his life in a boarding house in his neighbourhood, under the threat of a ban and ruined. His Roses, cheerful and good girls, sang his praises for a long time in front of the palace where their gardener had the honour to serve. Very little, too little, has been written about him. The main book of the present work, in French, brings together, for the first time, all the known elements of his life, from the period of the princely court he was a part of, to the 2nd Restoration, through the French Revolution and the 1st Empire. The present booklet proposes, in English, the essential parts of the original text. In the course of this story, André Dupont reveals his temper - sometimes a bit of an eccentric - so imbued with tenderness for his Roses!

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, April 5-July 4, 2011.