The small Oak-Egger Moth (Phalæna), The double Velvet Rose (Rosa Gallica) (1773)
兽亚纲
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- slightly upright 1.25 : 1
First Look
六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。
—— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》
The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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.
Name and Thing
Only the genus Rosa is given; species-level names came later. The Chinese name 兽亚纲 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 7.5% of the sheet, foliage 15.3%, the cast red with a second note of amber. 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.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 26% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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
榆荚车前盖地皮，蔷薇蘸水笋穿篱。
—— 唐·韩愈《游城南十六首。题于宾客庄》
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 Europe the rose means love and secrecy ('sub rosa'); in Chinese verse the rambling rose leans and clings — lingering attachment rather than ardour. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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 1773 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
“One hundred and twenty copper-plates of English moths and butterflies” carries only Benjamin Wilkes's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1773.
About this plate
The small Oak-Egger Moth (Phalæna), The double Velvet Rose (Rosa Gallica) (1773) is plate 88, from One hundred and twenty copper-plates of English moths and butterflies, drawn by Benjamin Wilkes. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, Benjamin White at Horace's-Head, 1773.
