Nymphaea Stellata (1921)
Nymphaea Stellata (1921)
Nymphaea Stellata (1921)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- upright 1.46 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
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 where the yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Nymphaea stellata: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Here the epithet stellata means “starred” — the name records the feature the namer noticed first. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 12.5% of the sheet, foliage 19.4%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. The sacred lotus lifts shield-shaped leaves above the water with a seed pod standing at the centre; waterlilies float their notched leaves and rest their flowers on the surface. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 36% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
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
家山随处可行楸，荷锸携壶似醉刘。
—— 宋·范成大《重九日行营寿藏之地》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the yellow the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
In China the lotus is the gentleman unstained by mud; in Buddhism it is the seat of the pure land. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
High summer, June to August. The sacred lotus is native to warm Asia and cultivated in China for three millennia. The year 1921 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
“The Flowering plants of South Africa” carries only Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
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 1921.
About this plate
Nymphaea Stellata (1921) is plate 9, from The Flowering plants of South Africa, drawn by Illtyd Buller Pole-Evans. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Kent, L. Reeve & Co., 1921.
