Erica ovata (1848-1849)
Ten ways of seeing
- slightly upright 1.29 : 1
First Look
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
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
The binomial is Erica ovata: 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.
Form and Colour
Garden annuals and low perennials: many small, brilliantly coloured flowers to a stem, with leaves palmately lobed, pinnate or entire — the mainstay of the Victorian bedding scheme.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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. 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
适情处处皆安乐，大抵园林胜市朝。
—— 唐·白居易《諭親友》
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
Bedding plants carry no imperial weight; they mean the everyday — window sill, border, festival, gift. Victorian floriography grew up among exactly these flowers. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late spring to early autumn, June through September. Gathered from everywhere by plant hunters and the glasshouse trade: pelargoniums from South Africa, campanulas from European mountains, lobelias from North America, fuchsias from Chile. The year 1848 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 universelle” carries only Jean Baptiste Louis Letellier'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. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1848 gave a whole day to a single flower.
