The Brimstone Moth (Phalæna crataegata), 1.The white Thorn (Crataegus oxyacantha), 2.The blue Bells (Hyacinthus non scriptus), 3.The red Ranunculus (Ranunculus Asiaticus) (1773)
Ctn stes|白色絢孔菌、钝裂叶山楂、兽亚纲、蓝铃花
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast blue
- slightly upright 1.27 : 1
First Look
六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。
—— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》
The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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 Crataegus is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 7.5% of the sheet, foliage 5.3%, the cast blue with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Flowering trees and shrubs put out branches first; blossoms open before or with the leaves, usually five thin, translucent petals around a cluster of fine stamens.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 16% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
客舍逢君未换衣，闭门愁见桃念飞。
—— 唐·刘长卿《客舍喜郑三见寄》
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
Plum is solitude, peach is marriage, apricot is spring itself, crabapple is a fragile fate; the hibiscus, opening at dawn and falling at dusk, is impermanence. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. cherry and crabapple went east to Japan and west to Europe. The year 1749 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
“Benjamin Wilkes” carries only Benjamin Wilkes's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1749.
About this plate
The Brimstone Moth (Phalæna crataegata), 1.The white Thorn (Crataegus oxyacantha), 2.The blue Bells (Hyacinthus non scriptus), 3.The red Ranunculus (Ranunculus Asiaticus) (1773) is plate 41, from Benjamin Wilkes, drawn by Benjamin Wilkes. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: English, ?-1749.
