Scutellaria albo-rosea
黄芩属
Scutellaria albo-rosea
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.54 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
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.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Scutellaria albo-rosea: 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 黄芩属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 12.3% of the sheet, foliage 18.9%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Roses are shrubs or scramblers with pinnate leaves of three to seven serrated leaflets; the double flowers open in crumpled, inward-curling layers around a small knot of yellow stamens. a moss green. 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 takes about 32% of the sheet, centred near the 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
菱透浮萍绿锦池，夏莺千啭弄蔷薇。
—— 唐·杜牧《齐安郡后池绝句》
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 Europe the rose means love and secrecy ('sub rosa'); in Chinese verse the rambling rose leans and clings — lingering attachment rather than ardour. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Late spring into early summer, peaking in May — the first flush of the garden year. Widespread in the temperate north. Chinese gardeners knew roses since the Han. The year 1854 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
“L'Illustration horticole” carries only Charles Antoine Lemaire'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 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Scutellaria albo-rosea is plate 336, 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.
