Collectanea botanica Pl.01
Bromelia fastucsa|Collectanea botanica Pl.01
Collectanea botanica Pl.01
About this plate
Collectanea botanica Pl.01 is plate 1, from Collectanea botanica, drawn by John Lindley. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, Richard and Arthur Taylor, 1821-1826.
Twelve ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.53 : 1
- published 1821
- Plate 1
Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.
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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 red is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
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Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
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Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 19.3% of the sheet, foliage 0.4%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible. Filed under red — a red close to carmine, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.53 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 26% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.
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Season
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable; the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. The year 1821 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.
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Provenance
Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.
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The Book and the Hand
“Collectanea botanica” was drawn by John Lindley and published 1821-1826. This plate is Plate 1. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
朝饮木兰之坠露兮，夕餐秋菊之落英。
—— 战国·屈原《离骚》
At dawn I drink the dew fallen from magnolia; at dusk I dine on the fallen petals of autumn chrysanthemum.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the red the corolla becomes its resting point.
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The Written Tradition
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 to the object; colour according to kind; planning the placing; transcribing and copying.
China had the Bencao Gangmu and the Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Realities; Europe moved from herbal woodcuts to chromolithography. Both trusted pictures to finish what words could not. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.
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Symbolism
The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. This plate leans red, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
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What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1821 gave a whole day to a single flower.
