Armenian Catchfly

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.64 : 1
• published 1829
• Plate 16

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.

1. 01

   First Look

   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; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.

   The sheet is vertical: the eye climbs and settles on the bird. Take the posture before the plumage. 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.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Armenian catchfly: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour is sparing, 0.5% of the sheet against 5.7% of foliage, the cast tending yellow-green — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. Insect plates show the host plant and all four stages at once — egg, larva, pupa, adult — with wing venation, scales and antennal segments accounted for: the most technical branch of natural-history art.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the bird perched mid-branch with generous margins above and below. (about 1.64 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 14% of the sheet, centred a little right of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. 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.

6. 06

   Season

   Set by life stage: butterflies in spring and summer, moths into autumn, beetles from May to July. Four stages on one sheet span a whole year. The year 1829 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.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Merian's Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705) first showed insect stages with their host plants — the result of raising caterpillars in the Surinam forest with her daughters. The volume was made in 1829-1847, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Edwards' Botanical Register” was drawn by Sydenham Edwards, John Lindley and published 1829-1847. This plate is Plate 16. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   儿童急走追黄蝶，飞入菜花无处寻。

   —— 宋·杨万里《宿新市徐公店》

   Children run after a yellow butterfly; it flies into the rapeseed bloom and cannot be found.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the bird itself becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    多识于鸟兽草木之名。

    —— 《论语·阳货》

    …and from the Songs one learns the names of birds, beasts, plants and trees.

    The Book of Songs notes which insects stir in which month — one of the earliest phenologies; the Bencao Gangmu lists a hundred insects under medicine. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In China the butterfly is dream and lovers, the cicada purity, the firefly a lamp for reading; in Europe the insect began as specimen before it became symbol. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

12. 12

    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.