Cypbipedium humile (1857)
Cypbipedium humile (1857)
Cypbipedium humile (1857)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.73 : 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 where the green is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 12 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Cypbipedium humile: 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
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 9.3% of the sheet, foliage 21.3%, the cast amber with a second note of red. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Orchids carry pseudobulbs or fleshy roots; six tepals, one modified into a lip that serves as a landing stage, and a column uniting stamens and pistil — a structure unique to the family. a moss green. 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 takes about 33% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
芄兰之支，童子佩觿。
—— 先秦·诗经·国风·卫风《芄兰》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the green the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the orchid is the gentleman who blooms unseen; in Victorian Europe it was luxury and obsession, a single new species worth a fortune. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. Worldwide, richest on tropical mountains. Chinese cymbidiums come from the hills of the south. The year 1857 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.
The Book and the Hand
“Illustrations of orchidaceous plants; a series of one hundred figures, chiefly selected from the Botanical register and British flower garden” carries only Sarah Anne Drake, Edwin Dalton Smith'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
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1857 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Cypbipedium humile (1857) is plate 98, from Illustrations of orchidaceous plants; a series of one hundred figures, chiefly selected from the Botanical register and British flower garden, drawn by Sarah Anne Drake, Edwin Dalton Smith. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, Willis and Sotheran, 1857.
