![Amaryllis reginaæ [Mexican Lily, Amaryllis] (1834) - A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ](/upload/nat/a-selection-of-hexandrian-plants-belonging-to-the-natural-orders-amaryllidae-and-liliacae-2/023-original.webp)
Amaryllis reginaæ [Mexican Lily, Amaryllis] (1834)
Amaryllis reginaæ [Mexican Lily, Amaryllis] (1834)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.33 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
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 Amaryllis is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Bulbous plants store the year underground — bulb, corm or tuber — then send up a few thick leaves and a single scape, with six tepals in cup, funnel or star.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. If you mean to copy it: take its skeleton, its margins and the order of its colours; the burin's hatching is the language of copper — suggest it with pencil density, do not imitate it stroke for stroke.
Poetic Resonance
郁金香汗裛歌巾，山石榴花染舞裙。
—— 唐·白居易《盧侍御小妓乞詩座上留贈》
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
The tulip was an imperial emblem in Istanbul and a speculative bubble in Amsterdam; the hyacinth sprang from a boy's blood in Greek myth. What bulbs share is concealment: next year kept underground. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Early spring to early summer, genus by genus: tulips and hyacinths first, gladiolus and amaryllis later. South African bulbs filled European glasshouses after 1800. The year 1834 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. See this kind of plate in the flowering season if you can: once you have met the living flower, you stop reading only colour.
The Book and the Hand
“A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ” carries only Priscilla Susan Bury's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1834 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Amaryllis reginaæ [Mexican Lily, Amaryllis] (1834) is plate 23, from A selection of hexandrian plants, belonging to the natural orders Amaryllidae and Liliacæ, drawn by Priscilla Susan Bury. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, R. Havell, 1834.
![Amaryllis psittacina [Parrotlily, Parrot flower, Red parrot beak, New Zealand Christmas bell] (1834)](/upload/nat/a-selection-of-hexandrian-plants-belonging-to-the-natural-orders-amaryllidae-and-liliacae-2/022-thumb.webp)
![Crinium Augustum. [Queen Emma] (1834)](/upload/nat/a-selection-of-hexandrian-plants-belonging-to-the-natural-orders-amaryllidae-and-liliacae-2/004-thumb.webp)
