Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.011
Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.011
Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.011
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- slightly upright 1.25 : 1
First Look
竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。
—— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》
A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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
Only the genus Camellia is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour is sparing, 0.2% of the sheet against 2.7% of foliage, the cast tending amber — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. 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 slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 6% of the sheet, centred near the 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. 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: 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
瓦盆社酿，石鼎山茶。
—— 宋·范成大《朝中措》
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. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late winter into early spring, blooming in the cold of the first lunar month. Southwest China and Japan, with Yunnan the centre of diversity. The year 1841 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
“Iconographie du genre Camellia” carries only Lorenzo Berlese'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
Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.011 is plate 11, from Iconographie du genre Camellia, drawn by Lorenzo Berlese. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Paris, H. Cousin, 1841-1843.
