Our Notes & References

First edition of the most famous Russian flora and the first with all plates hand-coloured. Here complete with the second part, with fine Russian bibliophile provenances, which is unusual for this book.

A member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Peter Simon Pallas (1741-1811) was amongst the most prolific collectors and explorers of European Russia, Siberia and Central Asia. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he published a great deal of his findings; this includes major works on the Russian flora and fauna, next to studies of people and travel accounts.

Pallas was invited to St. Petersburg and in 1767 he became an ordinary academician at the Academy of Sciences. Here he was soon involved in the vast array of expeditions which Catherine II was supporting to mark the transit of Venus, and was nominated leader of the first of a series of expeditions to Orenburg.

In 1774 they returned with a wealth of plant, animal and mineral specimens as well as ethnographic and geographic data, and the reports Pallas had sent throughout his journey were compiled into the three volume Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reichs [A journey through various provinces of the Russian Empire], published between 1771 and 1776. The success of this expedition made him a favourite of the Empress Catherine and Pallas taught natural history to her sons, the future Tsars Paul I and Alexander I.

Consulting his own specimens and those collected by other naturalists in Russia, Pallas began to produce his Flora Rossica, replete with descriptions and impressive illustrations for 283 species.

The plates are captioned in Latin and Russian, while the text gives local names in many other languages, depending on the plant: Turkish languages such as “Kirgiso-tatar”, Kalmuk, Armenian, Persian even, Tungus, Kamchatdale etc. – as well as sometimes Western European languages (German, English…). The detailed descriptions make use of works previously published, especially Gmelin’s Flora Sibirica and Amman’s flora among others.

The engraved title (featuring a vignetter with putti holding the book) like the plates are delicately coloured by hand and the last plates shows the structure of 24 different types of wood.

Pallas’ Flora was an ambitious project, intended originally to include 600 species, but it was never completed. A Russian edition was published in 1786, limited to part 1 only.

The Kushelev-Bezborodko – Polovtsev – Krylov copy.

This copy once belonged to the successive collections of three notable Russian bibliophiles. First, Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kushelev-Bezborodko (1834–62), who, despite his short life, assembled an impressive collection of books and European paintings—many now held by the Hermitage and Pushkin Museums.

His library was later acquired by Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Polovtsev (also Polovtsov, 1832–1909), a senator, privy councillor, honorary member of the Imperial Academies of Arts and Sciences, and one of the foremost patrons of the arts of his time. A founder and chairman of the Russian Historical Society, he sponsored and oversaw the publication of the Collection of the Imperial Russian Historical Society and the famous Russian Biographical Dictionary. His elaborate exlibris was designed by Vasilii Vasilevich (Johann-Wilhelm) Mate (1856–1917), a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts. Part of Polovtsev’s library was donated to the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design; the remainder was sold.

Finally, the copy belonged to the Leningrad bibliophile Vsevolod Aleksandrovich Krylov (1898–1986). A mining engineer by training, Krylov also built an outstanding and wide-ranging library, with large portions now held by the Russian National Library and the Library of the All-Russian Pushkin Museum. An illustrated catalogue of his library has been published.

Provenance

Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kushelev-Bezborodko (armorial blue ink stamp to engr. title and small blue ink monogram stamp to each plate); Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Polovtsev (armorial bookplate to upper pastedown and engr. shelflabel to lower pastedown);; V. A. Krylov (two different blue ink stamps to titles verso and last text pages).

Bibliography

De Belder 261; Nissen BBI 1482; Dunthorne 221; Great Flower Books, p.70; Hunt 672; Pritzel 6905; Obolianinov 1985; Smirdin 4522 (marking it 200 rub.); Svod. Kat. 5113.