Narcissus und Echo II (Rettungen Ovidischer Opfer, Opus II, Blatt 8) (1879-1891)
Ten ways of seeing
- upright 1.43 : 1
First Look
江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。
—— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》
On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.
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
Only the genus Narcissus is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
A layered bulb, upright strap leaves, six white tepals and a small golden cup — the Chinese name is 'silver terrace with a golden cup'.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. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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: 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
水中仙子来何处，翠袖黄冠白玉英。
—— 宋·朱熹《赋水仙花》
Where does the nymph of the water come from — green sleeves, yellow crown, white jade blooms?
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 China it is the New Year's offering — clear, fragrant, a little otherworldly; in Europe, because of Narcissus, it means self-love and the gaze turned inward. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late winter into early spring: forced in water in the twelfth month, blooming at the New Year. Native to the Mediterranean, reaching China by sea in the late Tang. The year 1879 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
“Rettungen Ovidischer Opfer (Deliverances of Ovidian Victims)” carries only Max Klinger'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 1879.
![Pyramus und Thisbe I (Rettungen Ovidischer Opfer, Opus II, Blatt 2 [2b]) (1879-1891)](/upload/nat/rettungen-ovidischer-opfer-deliverances-of-ovidian-victims/009-thumb.webp)
