Sisyrinchium striatum
Hisyrinchiuom striatum|智利庭菖蒲
Sisyrinchium striatum
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.63 : 1
First Look
六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。
—— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》
The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.
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. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 9 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Sisyrinchium striatum: 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 智利庭菖蒲 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 13.5% of the sheet, foliage 5.5%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Irises carry rhizomes or bulbs, sword-shaped leaves in two ranks, and six tepals — three falls drooping, often bearded or speckled, three standards erect. 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 covers only 22% of the sheet, centred a little left of 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. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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
彼泽之陂，有蒲菡萏。有美一人，硕大且俨。
—— 《诗经·陈风·泽陂》
On the bank of that pool grow rushes and lotus. There is a beautiful one, tall and grave.
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 sweet flag hung at the door wards off evil at midsummer; in Europe the iris is the messenger, since Iris was the rainbow goddess who carried divine words. This plate leans yellow, 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
Late spring to early summer, peaking in April and May, before the summer rains. in Europe Iris germanica gave the perfume trade its orris root. The year 1816 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
“Herbier général de l'amateur” carries only Jean Claude Michel Mordant de Launay's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1816.
About this plate
Sisyrinchium striatum is plate 62, 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.
