Pale yellowish-flowered Dendrobium (Dendrobium luteolum) (1867)
棕榈科
Pale yellowish-flowered Dendrobium (Dendrobium luteolum) (1867)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.37 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles in the upper half. Let the plant stand before you look for detail. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.
Name and Thing
Only the genus Dendrobium is given; species-level names came later. The Chinese name 棕榈科 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 3.9% of the sheet, foliage 3.8%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Orchids carry pseudobulbs or fleshy roots; six tepals, one modified into a lip that serves as a landing stage, and a column uniting stamens and pistil — a structure unique to the family.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 9% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
西风袅袅凌歌扇，秋期正与行兰远。
—— 《菩萨蛮·西风袅袅凌歌扇》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the orchid is the gentleman who blooms unseen; in Victorian Europe it was luxury and obsession, a single new species worth a fortune. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. Worldwide, richest on tropical mountains. Chinese cymbidiums come from the hills of the south. The year 1867 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“A second century of orchidaceous plants” carries only James Bateman's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1867.
About this plate
Pale yellowish-flowered Dendrobium (Dendrobium luteolum) (1867) is plate 85, from A second century of orchidaceous plants, drawn by James Bateman. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, L. Reeve & Co., 1867.
