Cypripedium pubescens (1857)
杓兰属
Cypripedium pubescens (1857)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.72 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
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 8 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Cypripedium pubescens: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Cypripedium: Cypripedium means 'slipper of Cypris' — Venus's slipper. The Chinese name 杓兰属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 4.2% of the sheet, foliage 16.1%, the cast yellow-green. 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.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 23% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
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
日消石桂绿岚气，风坠木兰红露浆。
—— 唐·白居易《江亭玩春》
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 orchid is the gentleman who blooms unseen; in Victorian Europe it was luxury and obsession, a single new species worth a fortune. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Varies by genus: temperate terrestrials flower in spring and summer, tropical epiphytes almost year-round. the orchids drawn for European portfolios came largely from the cloud forests of Central America and Southeast Asia. The year 1857 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
“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
Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. 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
Cypripedium pubescens (1857) is plate 93, 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.
