The great Ermine Moth (Phalæna lubricipeda), The small Garden Sun-Flower (Helianthus multiflorus) (1773)
兽亚纲、向日葵属
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- slightly upright 1.25 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
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 Helianthus 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 5.9% of the sheet, foliage 19.8%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Garden annuals and low perennials: many small, brilliantly coloured flowers to a stem, with leaves palmately lobed, pinnate or entire — the mainstay of the Victorian bedding scheme.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 takes about 28% of the sheet, centred below centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. 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
春风入园林，万卉以艳争相夸。
—— 宋·王十朋《和韓李花 其一》
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
Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
under glass they could be had from March. Gathered from everywhere by plant hunters and the glasshouse trade: pelargoniums from South Africa, campanulas from European mountains, lobelias from North America, fuchsias from Chile. The year 1749 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
“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. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1749 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
The great Ermine Moth (Phalæna lubricipeda), The small Garden Sun-Flower (Helianthus multiflorus) (1773) is plate 81, from Benjamin Wilkes, drawn by Benjamin Wilkes. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: English, ?-1749.
