Thalurania Watertoni
Thalurania Watertoni
Waterton’s Wood Nymph
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.41 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
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 watertoni: 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. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
In tropical America they are present all year, their season set by flowers. Americas only, from southern Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, richest in the Andes. China has no hummingbirds and no classical record of them. 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
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1850.
About this plate
British Guiana; and Northern Brazil?
Whether the Trochilidæ are less numerous in Demerara than in other parts of South America, and whether they have been less attended to, are questions I am unable to answer; certain it is that we possess but a limited knowledge of the species inhabiting that country.
At the same time I may remark, that the few with which we are acquainted are all very beautiful, as an evidence of which I may cite the rare and lovely bird here represented, which was discovered by Mr. Waterton on the banks of the Mibiri Creek, about forty miles up the River Essequibo. Mr. Waterton’s specimen was kindly presented by him to the late Mr. George Loddiges, in whose collection it still remains. For many years it was unique; but the researches of enthusiastic travellers and collectors are annually unfolding to us the treasures of South America, and very recently two other examples of this fine bird have been procured, not I believe in Demerara, but towards the confines of Brazil, and probably near the embouchure of the great river Amazon; these specimens now grace my own collection, and, with the one above referred to, are all that I have yet seen.
The Thalurania Watertoni is in every respect a typical member of the genus, being precisely of the same form, and clothed in a similar style of colouring as the T. furcata, but having the tail-feathers much more developed, and the blue of the back more generally spread, forming in fact a great mantle of metallic-blue feathers, which covers nearly the whole of the upper surface. The female remains still undiscovered.
Mr. Loddiges dedicated this fine bird to its discoverer, Mr. Waterton, whose writings on natural history are so well known to the world at large as to render any comment upon them quite unnecessary.
Crown of the head and back of the neck greenish bronze; back, shoulders, wing-coverts and flanks fine rich metallic blue; lower part of the back dark green; upper tail-coverts purple; throat, breast, and centre of the abdomen fine metallic grass-green; wings very dark purplish black; tail and under tail-coverts black, with steel-blue reflexions; bill black; feet dark brown.
The figure is the size of life.
References
- Trochilus Watertoni, Lodd. MSS.—Boure. in Proce. of Zool. Soc., part xv. p. 44.
- Polytmus Watertoni, Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds, vol. i. p. 108, Polytmus, sp. 65.
- Thalurania Watertoni, Bonap. Consp. Gen. Av., p. 76, Thalurania, sp. 4.—Ib. Rev. et Mag. de Zool. 1854, p. 254.
- Thalurania Watertoni, Reichenb. Aufz. der Colibris, p. 7.
- Coeligena Watertoni, Reichenb. Troch. enumer., p. 3.
