Coccoloba uvifera

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.61 : 1
• published 1816
• Plate 72

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.

1. 01

   First Look

   凡画山水，意在笔先。

   —— 唐·王维《山水论》

   In painting, the intention precedes the brush.

   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.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Coccoloba uvifera: 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 海葡萄 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 12.7% of the sheet, foliage 17.6%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Fruit plates pair the whole fruit with a section: the outline identifies the variety, the cut reveals skin thickness, core size and seed arrangement — the evidence of registration. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.61 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 35% of the sheet, centred below centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.

6. 06

   Season

   Late summer into autumn, variety by variety; a fruit portfolio spans the whole harvest. The year 1816 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Temperate fruits came mostly from Eurasia, later from the Americas. Nineteenth-century nurseries printed varietal albums for trade and exhibition: every fruit on the page was a saleable claim. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Herbier général de l'amateur” was drawn by Jean Claude Michel Mordant de Launay and published 1816-1827. This plate is Plate 72. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   荔枝新熟鸡冠色，烧酒初开琥珀香。

   —— 唐·白居易《荔枝楼对酒》

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the fruit becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    庭下如积水空明，水中藻荇交横，盖竹柏影也。

    —— 宋·苏轼《记承天寺夜游》

    The courtyard seemed flooded with clear water, weeds crossing in it — in fact the shadows of bamboo and cypress.

    The Book of Songs has a quince given and a jade pendant returned — fruit as ritual gift already in pre-Qin China. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In China the pomegranate means many sons, the peach long life, the orange good fortune; in Europe the apple is temptation and knowledge, the grape abundance and sacrifice. 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.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1816.