Collection of fruit bearing plants Pl.26
Bonk tonpang|Collection of fruit bearing plants Pl.26
Collection of fruit bearing plants Pl.26
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- square 0.77 : 1
First Look
论画以形似，见与儿童邻。
—— 宋·苏轼《书鄢陵王主簿所画折枝》
To judge painting by likeness alone is the view of a child.
Nearly square, plant and detail each holding a corner. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find where the yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 18.7% of the sheet, foliage 5.3%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Fruit plates pair the whole fruit with a section: the outline identifies the variety, the cut reveals skin thickness, core size and seed arrangement — the evidence of registration. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, built in washes from a pale ground. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is square. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 89% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole.
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
橘斋风露已清余，东郭先生病未除。
—— 唐·陆龟蒙《中元夜寄道侣二首 二》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the yellow the fruit becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the pomegranate means many sons, the peach long life, the orange good fortune; in Europe the apple is temptation and knowledge, the grape abundance and sacrifice. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
a fruit portfolio spans the whole harvest. Temperate fruits came mostly from Eurasia, later from the Americas. Nineteenth-century nurseries printed varietal albums for trade and exhibition: every fruit on the page was a saleable claim. The year 1820 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
“Collection of fruit bearing plants executed by one or more Chinese artists for Dr. Thomas Ward” carries only Chinese School's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Collection of fruit bearing plants Pl.26 is plate 26, from Collection of fruit bearing plants executed by one or more Chinese artists for Dr. Thomas Ward, drawn by Chinese School. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Island of Penang, 1820-1828.
