Quite a lot is known.
The Empress's roses were well-documented, and painted by Redoute, after all.
The best way to get a real idea of what grew at Malmaison is to start with a copy of Redoute's roses.

Jeri

Queen Marie Antoinette did not live at Malmaison. It was the home of Empress Joséphine whose roses are indeed well documented. Marie Antoinette lived at Versailles and I don't know what roses grew there. She may have had roses around her ferme ornée, the ornamental farm where she used to play the simple and rustic life.

Yes, a shepherdess must have a chapelet of roses.

Oops! Sorry! Wrong Queen!
Actually, Marie Antoinette would have had far fewer roses to choose from than Josephine did -- but she'd have recognized the older Gallicas, Damasks and Albas.

Jeri

there's always this famous painting of her:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Marie_Antoinette_rose.jpg

she probably had roses in petit triannon in general and the ferme ornée, like you said. :).

Just was curious if anyone knew any specific ones, that would be pretty fun. :)

Okay where is Amirose when you need him ??? Your link educated me as nearly every portrait has her with roses and a claim they were her favourite ... you can also buy modern postcards of the "anciene" picking roses at Versailles - would Mrs Bonaparte have risked all for a potentially notorious comparison to her deceased predecessor likes ?

Aimee -- She would almost certainly have had Rosa Mundi Apothecary Rose (R. gallica officinalis). She'd almost certainly have grown Autumn Damask, which which is said to date back to before the birth of Christ.
R. alba was known then, and was used in heraldry, so surely she'd have known that one.
R. eglantaria, certainly, and R. moschata . . . Remember Shakespeare's ". . . sweet musk roses and eglantyne . . . "??

How about Greater and Lesser Maiden's Blush?
Surely she'd have had those!

Jeri

I was at the palace last year and didn't notice many roses at all. The gardens are created from the paintings and blueprints that they have of what the gardens looked like. We are going back next fall, I will make sure to try and find out!, that is if anyone would even know something like that.

Jeri, you are a fount of information,... at the very least you have me intrigued to check out the roses you mentioned!

I sent an email to versailles' website... but I don't know if they'll have time to reply.

... and I suppose there's no guarantee that she had a lot of roses, she may have just been painted with them as a symbol.

Something interesting about Josephine's roses, was that they were kept in pots, not in the ground. If this was an established custom, then it's likely that Versailles never had many roses in the ground either.

I have been reading a biography of Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser and there has been no mention of roses. She was a Austrian teenage princess sent to be consort to the French heir. Her main job was to get pregnant and bear a son so at least as far as I've read she wasn't into gardening per se.

So much common knowledge of her (Let them eat cake) is untrue.

Denise

You need to rent the movie Marie Antoinette that came out I think like 3 years ago. It's a great movie, and according to our tour guide at Versailles, a lot of what happens in the movie is true. Such a beautiful place to visit!

Redouté was court painter to Marie Antoinette before he was engaged by Joséphine so presumably he painted flowers also at Versailles and probably roses too. There was not much difference in age between the two ladies, only 8 years, so Marie Antoinette could have had all the roses in existence in France in her day if she had wanted them, the same roses that Joséphine started her collection with. But Joséphine enlarged her collection, imported roses and encouraged breeders.

Some of the names of the oldest roses, such as "Cuisse de nymphe" (nymph's thigh), as a blush pink Alba rose is called, distinctly evoke the sensuality of pre-Revolutionary France. There is also a "Cuisse de nymphe emue" (thigh of aroused nymph) indicating a more intense pink.

I believe these were actually color names, invented not to describe the hues of flowers so much as for embroidery thread or fabric stuffs, such as would have been marketed to the French aristocracy during the ancien regime.

I gather that the roses of the pre-revolutionary era (from what I remember from my reading) would have included the Albas and the Centifolia group, bred in Holland.

There exists far less documentation on roses from the 1700's when Marie Antoinette lived. Because she held what appears to be a Centifolia, perhaps the Cabbage Rose in her hands in a famous painting, she probably really did hold that rose in her hands and hence was familiar with it.
Centifolia is believed to be the earliest garden class developed in Europe, and a small plant called ' de Meaux' a white Centifolia could date from the late 1700's.

Other roses that are documented, or believed to have been grown in Europe, before 1800 include
1200 a.d. The Apothecary Rose' was brought to France from the middle East, probably. This rose is the primogeniture rose of the Gallica family.
The earliest other Gallica rose mentioned is 'Tuscany' or the Velvet Rose which might have been grown during her lifetime.
'La Belle Sultane' may have been grown since 1795
the white Rose of York' was grown in England since the 1400's and since D.N.A. shows Alba roses descend from R. fed. a wild rose that comes from further east, perhaps Alba roses were first in France, or the Netherlands before they arrived in England.
One source told me that he believes a rose that was described as being grown in Europe in the 1500's fits 'Maidens Blush'.
Of colors of roses, in Europe there are no wild native red or yellow roses, and all the pre-1800 red roses descend from R. gallica.
She might have seen the 'Austrian Briar' a yellow wild rose that, despite its name, is not native to Austria. It too was probably brought from Turkey or further east.
The 'Yellow Rose' a double rose that appears like a bowl filled with petals, was so rare that even a Dutch Master painter might have had trouble finding even one to paint, which is why most of the Dutch masters painted pink or white Centifolia type roses. However if anyone wanted a R. hemispherica, I think perhaps someone of her social status might have acquired it.
Graham Stuart Thomas wrote that he believed that R. moschata was brought to England in the Elizabethan era, (mid 1500's to 1603). Marie Antoinette might have seen this rose. There are no native plants extant of this rose and no one knows where it originated from, one source believes that perhaps the Moors brought it from Northern Africa to Spain and the Iberian peninsula.
There wern't many types of garden roses in the 1700's and so Marie Antoinette could have also loved wild roses.
The wild roses of France are several, all are pink and/or white and like all European roses bloom only once a year, each bush for about a month long.

Hope this is of some help.
Lux.

I would la Bagatelle in Paris. Not only does it have a very old rose garden, but had dealings with MA herself. If anyone would know, they would.

http://www.rosarosam.com/gardens/bagatelle/bagatelle_detail.html

If you look at the bottom of this page of centifolia thumbnails there is a list of names and dates for each one. Marie Antoinette could have known any from before 1793.

I have the impression that Josephine loved roses more, much more. I may be prejudiced but I think she had better taste, and her patronage was an inspiration to the rose breeders's art. It was in her era that deliberate cross pollination was discovered.

The master French rose breeder of the nineteenth century, Jean-Pierres Vibert (1777-1866) was a former soldier who fought under Napoleon in 1810.

Shortly before his death at the age of 89 in 1866, Vibert told his grandson:

"Like the rest of the world, I have thought that I adored and detested many men and many things. In reality, I have loved only Napoléon and roses. Today, after nearly a century of rebellion against all the evils which I have suffered, there remain to me only two objects of profound hatred: the English, who overthrew my idol, and the white worms that have destroyed my roses."

I think a character who may be modeled on him appears as a character in in Victor Hugo's Les miserables. But perhaps someone else remembers this better than I do.

Brent Dickerson maintains a wonderful website devoted to Vibert -- http://www.csulb.edu/~odinthor/vibert.html

Here is a link that might be useful: centifolias with dates of introduction pics