The cave fauna of North America Pl 24 (1888)
Ten ways of seeing
- slightly upright 1.22 : 1
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.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands 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.
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
Tropical plants defy temperate habits: heavy, saturated flowers with strong scent, leathery or dissected leaves, stems that climb, swell, or reduce to spines.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.
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
山城过雨百花尽，榕叶满庭莺乱啼。
—— 唐·柳宗元《柳州二月榕葉落盡偶題》
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 these plants carry no classical symbolism; their meaning is newness — new worlds, new species, new trade routes. They show natural history's expanding edge. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
The tropics have no four seasons, only wet and dry. Central and South America, Southeast Asia, India, Ceylon. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists either sailed with the ships or drew from living specimens under glass. The year 1888 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
“The Cave Fauna of North America” carries only Alpheus Spring Packard'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
Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
