Leucojum Aestivum. 2 . Pentlandia Miniata.
Leucojum Aestivum. 2 . Pentlandia Miniata.
Leucojum Aestivum. 2 . Pentlandia Miniata.
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.35 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
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 orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
Only the genus Leucojum is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 18.4% of the sheet, foliage 12.5%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A layered bulb, upright strap leaves, six white tepals and a small golden cup — the Chinese name is 'silver terrace with a golden cup'. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 33% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
含香体素欲倾城，山矾是弟梅是兄。
—— 宋·黄庭坚《王充道送水仙花五十枝》
Fragrant, white-bodied, all but city-toppling; the snowbell is its younger brother, the plum its elder.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China it is the New Year's offering — clear, fragrant, a little otherworldly; in Europe, because of Narcissus, it means self-love and the gaze turned inward. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Late winter into early spring: forced in water in the twelfth month, blooming at the New Year. Zhangzhou in Fujian has grown it since Ming times. The year 1872 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. 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
“Haarlem's Flora” carries only Arentine H. Arendsen's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Leucojum Aestivum. 2 . Pentlandia Miniata. is plate 73, from Haarlem's Flora, drawn by Arentine H. Arendsen. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Haarlem : 1872-1881..
