Boltonia glastifolia
Belonin ylastifetia|偶雏菊属
Boltonia glastifolia
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.64 : 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.
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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 8 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Boltonia glastifolia: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 偶雏菊属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 2.9% of the sheet, foliage 1.1%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Chrysanthemums are herbaceous with deeply lobed, downy leaves. Each 'flower' is a head — ray florets around the rim, disc florets in the centre, hundreds of small flowers in one.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 10% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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
少日曾题菊枕诗，蠹编残稿锁蛛丝。
—— 宋·陆游《余年二十时尝作菊枕诗颇传于人今秋偶复采菊》
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
In China, seclusion and long life — and, after Tao Yuanming, the will to go home; in Japan, imperial authority. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Deep autumn, around the Double Ninth in the ninth month — after the first frost, when everything else is gone. Native to China, adopted in Japan as the imperial crest, carried to Europe by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and remade by Victorian breeders. The year 1816 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“Herbier général de l'amateur” carries only Jean Claude Michel Mordant de Launay'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
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 1816 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Boltonia glastifolia is plate 51, from Herbier général de l'amateur, drawn by Jean Claude Michel Mordant de Launay. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Paris, Audot, Libraire, 1816-1827.
