Plantes des environs de Paris Pl.059 (1805)
Famitle naturelle|盲蝽科
Plantes des environs de Paris Pl.059 (1805)
About this plate
Plantes des environs de Paris Pl.059 (1805) is plate 59, from Plantes des environs de Paris, drawn by Pierre Jean François Turpin. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Paris, 1805.
Twelve ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.33 : 1
- published 1805
- Plate 59
Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.
-
First Look
真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。
—— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》
Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.
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.
-
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 盲蝽科 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
-
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 1.9% of the sheet, foliage 3.1%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
-
Composition
Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.33 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 5% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
-
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.
-
Season
Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable; the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. The year 1805 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. Note the season. Phenology is the most practical tool of appreciation.
-
Provenance
Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.
-
The Book and the Hand
“Plantes des environs de Paris” was drawn by Pierre Jean François Turpin and published 1805. This plate is Plate 59. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
-
Poetic Resonance
天地有大美而不言，四时有明法而不议。
—— 《庄子·知北游》
Heaven and earth have great beauty and do not speak.
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.
-
The Written Tradition
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 to the object; colour according to kind; planning the placing; transcribing and copying.
China had the Bencao Gangmu and the Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Realities; Europe moved from herbal woodcuts to chromolithography. Both trusted pictures to finish what words could not. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.
-
Symbolism
The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
-
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 1805 gave a whole day to a single flower.
