Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.027
Hetevopetula rubra|J. J, Jung, pinx. Oudet, sc Camellia Hetevopetula rubra N. Rémond,jmp
Iconographie du genre Camellia Pl.027
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.40 : 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.
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 15 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
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, 0.3% of the sheet against 5.3% 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. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 10% of the sheet, centred a little right 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. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
人卖山茶先谷雨，鸦随墦祭过清明。
—— 宋·陆游《春晴自云门归三山》
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. 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
“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
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. 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.027 is plate 27, 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.
