Flowers, birds and insects Pl.27 (18th century)
Flowers, birds and insects Pl.27 (18th century)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- slightly upright 1.24 : 1
First Look
竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。
—— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》
A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands on the bird's head, a little above centre. Then step in close: watch where colour meets line, and whether the line ever breaks. Third, find where the orange 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 11.3% of the sheet, foliage 3.6%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Bird plates usually choose the perched pose: one foot gripping, one loose, the flight feathers laid in first, coverts over them, then the horny gleam of bill and eye. Filed under orange — an amber orange. Feather colour is structure, not pigment: light bent by barbules. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 19% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The exact date is lost. Woodcut before 1700, copper in the eighteenth century, steel and lithography from the 1820s, chromolithography by the century's end. 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
是梦他松后追轩冕，是化为鹤后去山林。
—— 宋·辛弃疾《最高楼》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the bird itself becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the crane is longevity, the magpie joy, the wild goose a letter, the eagle prowess; in the Americas each bird carries a different totem. One bird, unrelated meanings. This plate leans orange, 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
Bound to migration: north in spring, south in autumn, each species answering to a few weeks. Audubon's plates often read 'adult, spring' — plumage at its height. Audubon's Birds of America (1827–1838) came from specimens he shot himself, wired into lifelike poses and drawn from life — which is why the birds look so alive, and why the method is uncomfortable. No firm date survives, so the season is inferred from the subject. 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
“Flowers, birds and insects” carries only Anonymous'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. Flowers fall, paper yellows; what the page keeps is the very moment that would not stay.
About this plate
Flowers, birds and insects Pl.27 (18th century) is plate 27, from Flowers, birds and insects, drawn by Anonymous. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: China, 18th century.
