Polyanthus Narcissus 1.Grand Monarque. 2. Grand Soleil Dor
Polyanthus Narcissus 1.Grand Monarque. 2. Grand Soleil Dor
Polyanthus Narcissus 1.Grand Monarque. 2. Grand Soleil Dor
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.37 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
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.
Name and Thing
Only the genus Narcissus 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 19.7% of the sheet, foliage 9.4%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. 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 yellow — a honey-yellow, 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 38% of the sheet, centred near the 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 yellow 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 yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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. 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
“Haarlem's Flora” carries only Arentine H. Arendsen's name. A plate is collective work: drawer, engraver and colourist were different hands, and the unnamed ones decided how good it looks.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Polyanthus Narcissus 1.Grand Monarque. 2. Grand Soleil Dor is plate 95, 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..
