![Aphyteia hydnora [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817) (Aphyteia hydnora [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817)) - Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town](/upload/nat/drawings-of-plants-collected-at-cape-town/031-original.webp)
Aphyteia hydnora [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817)
血红南寄生、延药睡莲
Aphyteia hydnora [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- slightly upright 1.24 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
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
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 16.7% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. The sacred lotus lifts shield-shaped leaves above the water with a seed pod standing at the centre; waterlilies float their notched leaves and rest their flowers on the surface.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 18% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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
接天莲叶无穷碧，映日荷花别样红。
—— 宋·杨万里《晓出净慈寺送林子方》
Leaves to the horizon, endlessly green; lotus in the sun, red beyond compare.
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
in Buddhism it is the seat of the pure land; in Egypt the waterlily is sunrise and rebirth. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
each flower opens at dawn and closes by afternoon, lasting three days. The sacred lotus is native to warm Asia and cultivated in China for three millennia. The year 1817 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
“Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town” carries only Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Aphyteia hydnora [Nymphaea nouchali] (1817) is plate 31, from Drawings of plants collected at Cape Town, drawn by Clemenz Heinrich Wehdemann. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: 1817-1820.
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