Pervenche Desséchée (Dried Periwinkle)

Pervenche Desséchée by J.J. Grandville

c.1847-1867

Hand-colored Engraving

This hand-colored 1847 engraving by J.J. Grandville depicts the "Dried Periwinkle" (Pervenche desséchée) personified as an elegant woman with her eyes closed. She is illustrated with a bonnet made of periwinkle petals and a dress fashioned from green leaves and a central stem, giving the appearance of a pressed flower flattened onto a sheet of paper. The whimsical artwork is part of the celebrated series Les Fleurs Animées, where common plants are reimagined as stylish ladies reflecting the 1840s French fashion.

Les Fleurs Animées belongs to Grandville’s most celebrated illustrated projects and reflects the broader nineteenth-century fascination with the personification of nature through visual culture. Grandville, a leading French caricaturist and book illustrator, was known for his imaginative hybridizations of human, animal, and botanical forms, which often carried satirical and allegorical undertones. In this series, each flower is transformed into a female personification whose costume and gestures are designed to reflect the perceived character and symbolic associations of the plant itself. The work is significant for its fusion of natural history illustration, decorative fantasy, and moralized allegory, and it anticipates later developments in surrealist visual language by collapsing distinctions between organic life, mythological reference, and human behavior into a single imaginative system.

Dimensions: H 10 ¼” x 7”W

Condition: Slight discoloration at edges consistent with age