Flore d’Amérique, dessinée d’après nature sur les lieux Pl.060 (1843)
FLORE D'AMÉRIQUE e yrandeuv atureltel) L'AVOCATIER (Lanrus) Cet arbre raporte un fruit excellent apelé l'Avocat, et son noyeau, leprocureur; sa pulpe ale joût et la couleur du beurre frais( il en
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.51 : 1
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 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 yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 12 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
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 9.0% of the sheet, foliage 11.5%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Tropical plants defy temperate habits: heavy, saturated flowers with strong scent, leathery or dissected leaves, stems that climb, swell, or reduce to spines. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, 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 34% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
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. 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
馆娃宫中春日暮，荔枝木瓜花满树。
—— 唐·王建《舞曲歌辭 白紵歌二首 二》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the yellow the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China these plants carry no classical symbolism; their meaning is newness — new worlds, new species, new trade routes. They show natural history's expanding edge. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
flowering follows the first rains, so a month on the plate often means 'after the rain'. Central and South America, Southeast Asia, India, Ceylon. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists either sailed with the ships or drew from living specimens under glass. The year 1843 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
“Flore d'Amérique, dessinée d'après nature sur les lieux” carries only Etienne Denisse'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. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1843.
About this plate
Flore d’Amérique, dessinée d’après nature sur les lieux Pl.060 (1843) is plate 60, from Flore d'Amérique, dessinée d'après nature sur les lieux, drawn by Etienne Denisse. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Paris, Gihaut, 1843-1846.
