Ny Poiteau (1924)
Svenska Fruktsorter II uppl. PI. 72 aNy Aly Paiteau Mäl af Henriette Sjöberé Haæggst
Ny Poiteau (1924)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.31 : 1
First Look
夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。
—— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》
Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.
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. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 11 points further right than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 16.4% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Camellias are evergreen shrubs with thick, waxen, serrate leaves; the double flowers overlap like roof tiles and fall whole, petals still attached.No colour group is recorded. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 22% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
After 1900 photography and colour reproduction ran alongside watercolour: accuracy rose, the cut of the burin disappeared. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. If you mean to copy it: this is a photomechanical record — match the colours directly, do not imitate the printing grain.
Poetic Resonance
自立冬，将残腊，雪片似江梅，血点般山茶。
—— 《双调·新水令·题西湖四时》
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 the camellia is the friend that endures; in Europe it became Eastern beauty and unattainability, and after La Dame aux Camélias, a token of brief life. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.
Season and Place
Late winter into early spring, blooming in the cold of the first lunar month. Southwest China and Japan, with Yunnan the centre of diversity. The year 1924 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
“Swedish fruit varieties (Svenska fruktsorter)” carries only Henriette Sjöberg'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
Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1924.
About this plate
Ny Poiteau (1924) is plate 11, from Swedish fruit varieties (Svenska fruktsorter), drawn by Henriette Sjöberg. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Stockholm, P. A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1924.
