Corn Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) with a brown fly
虞美人
Corn Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) with a brown fly
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.61 : 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 where the orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Corn poppy: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 虞美人 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 10.0% of the sheet, foliage 14.0%, the cast red with a second note of amber. 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. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 35% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
Before 1700 most botanical figures came from woodcut: thick, hard lines in relief, colour brushed on afterwards. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. 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
春色满园关不住，一枝红杏出墙来。
—— 宋·叶绍翁《游园不值》
Spring cannot be shut inside a garden: one branch of apricot reaches over the wall.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange 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. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. 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 1510 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Book of Flower Studies” carries only Master of Claude de France'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
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 1510 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Corn Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) with a brown fly is plate 34, from Book of Flower Studies, drawn by Master of Claude de France. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: France, 1510–1515.
