Thalurania Columbica
Thalurania Columbica
Columbian Wood-Nymph
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.35 : 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 on the bird. Take the posture before the plumage. 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.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Thalurania columbica: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
The smallest of birds: a needle-fine bill, a forked tubular tongue, wings beating so fast the bird hovers and even flies backwards. Its colour is not pigment but structure — light bent by feather barbules, changing with the angle.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
Tall and narrow, the bird perched mid-branch with generous margins above and below. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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
夫列子御风而行，泠然善也，旬有五日而后反。
—— 《庄子·逍遥游》
Liezi rode the wind and came back after fifteen days, so light was his going.
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the bird itself becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
For the Aztecs the hummingbird was warrior and sun; for Victorian Europe it was the ultimate ornament, millions killed for breast jewellery. China has no tradition here — and that blank is itself a history of exchange. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
In tropical America they are present all year, their season set by flowers. the name arrives with late-Qing travel writing. The year 1850 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
“Gould's Hummingbirds” carries only John Gould'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
Next time you watch a bird: posture first, then where the plumage is deepest, and only then the field guide. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1850 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
The hilly parts of New Granada
However highly M. Warszewicz may have extolled the loveliness of the Thalurania venusta, it scarcely exceeds that of the bird here represented, which must also be regarded as a species of great beauty and elegance.
As its name implies, its native country is Columbia, and the chief mart whence specimens are sent to Europe is that great emporium of bird-skins, Santa Fé de Bogota. It differs from all the other known species in its small neat blue cap, and the almost total absence of blue on the back, this colour being more confined to the shoulders; I observe, too, that the green colouring of the throat descends farther down the chest than in T. furcatus, and that this mark, moreover, assumes a more rounded form on its lower margin; the bird is also somewhat larger in size.
The great number of specimens that are sent to Europe—principally to France—testify that the bird is very abundant in the districts visited by the Indian collector. Fortunately, this bird has received only a single specific appellation; but it has been placed in three distinct genera.
The male has the crown of the head, a band across the centre of the back, the lesser wing-coverts, the under wing-coverts, the abdomen, flanks and under tail-coverts of a lovely blue; back of the head and neck, back and greater wing-coverts black in some lights, deep green in others; throat and breast shining grassgreen; wings purplish brown; upper tail-coverts and tail black, glossed with steel-blue.
The female is golden green above, grey beneath; tail green at the base, the apical portion steel-blue, all but the two middle feathers tipped with greyish white.
The figures are of the natural size. The plant is the Gualtheria bracteata.
References
- Ormsmya Colombica, Bourc. et Muls. Rey. Zool. 1843, p. 2.—Ib. Ann. de la Soe. Sci. de Lyon, 1843, pl. 6.
- Polytmus Columbicus, Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. i. p. 108, Polytmus, sp. 60.
- Thalurana Columbiana, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., part xx. p. 8.
- Thalurana colombica, Bonap. Rey. et Mag. de Zool. 1854, p. 254.
- Thalurana columbica, Reichenb. Aufz. der Col., p. 7.
