Lupinus. Perennis. Lupin (1856)
Lupinus. Perennis. Lupin (1856)
Lupinus. Perennis. Lupin (1856)
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast amber
- upright 1.38 : 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 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
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 2.9% of the sheet, foliage 3.3%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Wildflowers are rarely tidy: small blooms, slender stems, leaves imperfect and often chewed. That untidiness is exactly what records wind, light and soil.No colour group is recorded. 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 fills 69% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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
君报还期在早春，桥边日日看芳草。
—— 唐·皇甫冉《送包佶賦得天津橋》
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 Chinese verse wildflowers bloom unseen, owing nothing to praise; in the West they mark a place — one species, one landscape's character. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
in the northeastern United States, April to August — each species for two or three weeks, so a wildflower book is arranged by month. they resent transplanting and will not mass in a border — the difference between a wildflower and a garden flower. The year 1856 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
“Wild flowers of Georgetown, DC” carries only Rebecca Nourse's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1856 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Lupinus. Perennis. Lupin (1856) is plate 64, from Wild flowers of Georgetown, DC, drawn by Rebecca Nourse. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: Georgeotwn, D.C., 1856.
