Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens Pl.50
Erica elongata inne|黄昏锡嘴雀
Plants drawn by Miss Brooks from living specimens Pl.50
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- broad 0.76 : 1
First Look
竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。
—— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》
A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.
Broad and horizontal: the eye travels side to side. Find where it stops. 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 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 5.4% of the sheet, foliage 6.0%, 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 broad. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 15% of the sheet, centred a little right 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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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
扫石弹琴，卷帘看鹤，白云深处人家。
—— 《小窗幽记·集倩篇第十二》
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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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. 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
“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. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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.50 is plate 50, 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.
