Habranthus fulgens
Serre froide|葱莲属
Habranthus fulgens
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.51 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
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 orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Habranthus fulgens: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 葱莲属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 29.7% of the sheet, foliage 6.7%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. The sacred lotus lifts shield-shaped leaves above the water with a seed pod standing at the centre; waterlilies float their notched leaves and rest their flowers on the surface. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. 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 fills 39% of the sheet, centred above centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole.
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
枫叶飘红，莲房肥露，枕席嫩凉先到。
—— 《倾杯令·枫叶飘红》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
in Buddhism it is the seat of the pure land; in Egypt the waterlily is sunrise and rebirth. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
each flower opens at dawn and closes by afternoon, lasting three days. The sacred lotus is native to warm Asia and cultivated in China for three millennia. The year 1854 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
“L'Illustration horticole” carries only Charles Antoine Lemaire's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Habranthus fulgens is plate 128, from L'Illustration horticole, drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Gand, Belgium, Imprimerie et lithographie de F. et E. Gyselnyck,1854-1896.
