Camellia japonica
山茶花
Camellia japonica
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.77 : 1
First Look
搜尽奇峰打草稿。
—— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》
Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.
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 13 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Camellia japonica: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet japonica means “of Japan” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. The Chinese name 山茶花 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 18.0% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Camellias are evergreen shrubs with thick, waxen, serrate leaves; the double flowers overlap like roof tiles and fall whole, petals still attached.No colour group is recorded. 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 18% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. 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
旖旎细风飘水麝，玲珑残雪浸山茶。
—— 宋·贺铸《摊破浣溪沙》
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 the camellia is the friend that endures; in Europe it became Eastern beauty and unattainability, and after La Dame aux Camélias, a token of brief life. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
a single flower may last a fortnight. Southwest China and Japan, with Yunnan the centre of diversity. The year 1781 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
“Icones Plantarum Rariorum” carries only Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin'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. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Camellia japonica is plate 81, from Icones Plantarum Rariorum, drawn by Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Vindobonae, C.F. Wappler, 1781-1793.
