Les Vélins du Roi

A smaller vellum (31.1 cm by 20.2 cm) depicting an iris made in Poitiers (where Le Roy lived) in 1608 by one Van Kuyk, a pupil of van Kessel appears in the Cleveland Museum of Art[4] which presents it as a page from a florilegium commissioned by Le Roy in 1608 and illustrated by several artists, perhaps including himself.

Hamy recalls that Le Roy's talent was celebrated by the poet and apothecary Paul Contant [fr], who said: "Du Sieur de la Boissière, Architas Poitevin, / Timanthe sans égal, dont la dextre savante, / fait tout ce que nature à notre œil représente (Jardin poétique, p. 83)[5].

1622 saw the publication of Theatrum florae In quo ex toto orbe selecti mirabiles venustiores ac praecipui flores tanquam ab ipsus deae sinu proferuntur[8]: 69 engraved plates of flowers and insects.

Gaston of Orléans died in 1660, bequeathing his collections (cabinet of curiosities, medals, antiques, vellums) to his nephew, Louis XIV, , who lodged them at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

He also contributed to the Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des plantes [fr][10] (with Abraham Bosse for the engraving).

On his death, he was succeeded by Louis de Chastillon who, in addition to his artistic work, was a draughtsman for the French Academy of Sciences.

Robert's successors as painters of the plants in the royal botanical garden were Jean Joubert (1643-1707), who was assisted by Claude Aubriet.

In 1793, he was appointed to the chair of natural iconography[14] at the newly created Muséum national d'histoire naturelle: it was to train miniaturist painters, now specialised in botany or zoology and recruited by competition; their works now had an explicitly scientific purpose.

Of particular note is a catalogue of flowers, Description des plantes nouvelles et peu connues, cultivées dans le jardin de J. M. Cels.

Henri-Joseph Redouté (1766-1852) was a painter at the Muséum, then took part in the Commission des Sciences et des Arts during the "Expedition to Egypt", in the company of botanists such as Ernest Coquebert de Monbret [fr], Hippolyte Nectoux [fr] and Raffeneau-Delile - the latter being responsible for the botanical plates in the Description de l'Égypte, illustrated with engravings taken from Redouté's watercolours on Bristol paper.

Ange-Louis-Guillaume Le Sourd de Beauregard (Paris, 17 April 1800-1886), a pupil of van Spaendonck and a painter of flowers, also became a professor of iconography in 1841.

We can also mention Adèle Riché; Jean Saturnin Abeille de Fontaine (born in Paris in 1721, the son of Joseph Abeille); Édouard Maubert (1806-1879), who specialised in botanical and horticultural illustrations; Alfred Riocreux (1820-1912), a painter at the Manufacture Royale de Porcelaine at Sèvres, he drew for Gustave Thuret, algologist, whom he accompanied to Cherbourg (around 1844-45).