Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens Pl.39
黄昏锡嘴雀
Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens Pl.39
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- slightly upright 1.30 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands on the bird's head, a little 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. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 13 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 黄昏锡嘴雀 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 3.3% of the sheet, foliage 1.4%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Bird plates usually choose the perched pose: one foot gripping, one loose, the flight feathers laid in first, coverts over them, then the horny gleam of bill and eye.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 6% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing. 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
漆燕黄鹂夸舌健，柳花榆荚斗身轻。
—— 宋·王禹偁《清明日独酌》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the bird itself becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the crane is longevity, the magpie joy, the wild goose a letter, the eagle prowess; in the Americas each bird carries a different totem. One bird, unrelated meanings. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Bound to migration: north in spring, south in autumn, each species answering to a few weeks. Audubon's plates often read 'adult, spring' — plumage at its height. Audubon's Birds of America (1827–1838) came from specimens he shot himself, wired into lifelike poses and drawn from life — which is why the birds look so alive, and why the method is uncomfortable. The year 1838 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
“Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens in the collection of John Thomas Brooks esq. at Flitwick House” carries only Mary Ann Brooks'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
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1838.
About this plate
Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens Pl.39 is plate 39, from Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens in the collection of John Thomas Brooks esq. at Flitwick House, drawn by Mary Ann Brooks. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Bedfordshire, 1838-1848.
