Amaryllis vittata – Belladonna (1789)
花朱顶红
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- slightly upright 1.30 : 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
The binomial is Amaryllis vittata: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 花朱顶红 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 6.9% of the sheet, foliage 5.6%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Bulbous plants store the year underground — bulb, corm or tuber — then send up a few thick leaves and a single scape, with six tepals in cup, funnel or star.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
The sheet is slightly tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 14% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
郁金香是兰陵酒，枉入诗人赋咏来。
—— 宋·王安石《答熊本推官金陵寄酒》
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
The tulip was an imperial emblem in Istanbul and a speculative bubble in Amsterdam; the hyacinth sprang from a boy's blood in Greek myth. What bulbs share is concealment: next year kept underground. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
Early spring to early summer, genus by genus: tulips and hyacinths first, gladiolus and amaryllis later. South African bulbs filled European glasshouses after 1800. The year 1789 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
“Watercolors of flowers and butterflies” carries only R. B. F.'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
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.
About this plate
Amaryllis vittata – Belladonna (1789) is plate 2, from Watercolors of flowers and butterflies, drawn by R. B. F.. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: England, 1789.
![Admiral butterfly, & aster – or michs. [michaelmas] daisy (1789)](/upload/nat/watercolors-of-flowers-and-butterflies/001-thumb.webp)
