Art-Studies from Nature

BY EDWARD HULME, F.L.S., F.S.A.

In this series of papers it will be our desire to direct the attention of the architect, manufacturer, and designer, to some of the beautiful forms of nature, which, though easily accessible, seem to have scarcely received the consideration they deserve; to give a brief account of the habits, peculiarities, and localities of the plants as they come before us; to cite from time to time examples, either English or foreign, of their use in the ornament of the past; and generally to add such details as may directly or indirectly tend to create an interest in the plant in question. We find, on looking back at the past history and practice of ornamental art, in the midst of many marked differences of style, one principle very generally observed—the use in the ornament of any given country of the plants familiar to the people. Hence, the Egyptians exclusively used in their ornament the plants of their own land; we see the palm branch, the papyrus, and the beautiful lily of the Nile constantly recurring.

We find the Greeks and Romans employing the acanthus, olive, and vine; the Japanese, the light and graceful bamboo; and in our own Gothic styles and those of the Continent—French, German, or Spanish—we meet with more or less conventionalised representations in the carvings, paintings, illuminations, fabrics for dress, hangings, &c., of the familiar forms of our hedgerows, streams, and meadows, such as the wild rose, oak, maple, iris, buttercup, and many others. It is then with the desire to awaken our decorators to the fact, that beautiful as the Greek anthemion and other allied forms are, they by no means represent the limit available in ornamental art, that the following papers have been prepared, since we are persuaded that if once the inexhaustible riches of nature were sought after by our architects, and their beauties brought before the eyes of the people in their work, architecture would thus be taking one long step nearer to the sympathies and appreciation of many to whom it is now a matter of indifference.

The works of a few of our leading architects owe at least some of their beauty to their recognition of this truth; and we would desire, while acknowledging the services rendered to architecture by such men as Pugin, Collings, Street, and Gilbert Scott, to add our mite to the revival going on around us.

Botany, or the study of plants (Gr. botane, a plant), is capable of many subdivisions: thus we have one department which, from its dealing with the vital functions of the plant, we term physiology (Gr. physis, nature—logos, science); another which, from its more especially dealing with the organization and structure of the plant, is called organography, or structural botany; while a third great division, systematic botany, derives its name from its teaching how the multifarious forms of vegetable life may yet be classified into genera, and these again into orders and species from certain points of resemblance in the plants thus classed together.

Botany, in itself a science in the ordinary use of the term, may, however, render valuable service to art; and it is this phase of the subject which we more especially propose to develop, treating only of the more exclusively scientific points so far as we find them necessary for our present purpose; and in this we think we are fully justified, for though numbers of excellent works are accessible to the student who desires to study botany as a science, but few fully recognise its importance in a modified form to the art-student, and more especially to the designer. To the ornamentist a knowledge of the laws of plant growth is of really the same importance as the study of anatomy to the figure-painter or sculptor, and the absence of this knowledge is to the initiated, in either case, as readily detected. Many who are now content to forego this precise knowledge are no doubt partly debarred by the technicalities which meet them at every sentence in ordinary botanical works.

Bearing in mind, therefore, the special requirements of our readers, we shall endeavour to avoid as far as possible the use of terms which, though scientifically valuable, and in fact essential to correct and true description, are not such as we may reasonably assume our readers, without special botanical study, to be familiar with. A knowledge of these terms is, however, very desirable, since their conciseness renders them valuable, and more especially, also, because many excellent works, which it will be of advantage to the student to consult, largely employ them. We trust that in the few cases where such terms are in the present work introduced, a clear explanation of their force and utility will be found to accompany them; we shall also, as a further assistance, add the source from whence the term is derived, wherever the introduction will tend to throw additional light on the meaning of the word.

As we cannot hope, in the limited space at our command, to supply every requirement, give every detail, or bring forward more than a few of the more common plants, the present work must be considered rather as a suggestive list of the more striking plants which, from their ornamental characteristics, will, we trust, be found of service to designers, than an exhaustive catalogue. It is very far indeed from being a complete list.

To render the work as practically useful as possible, we add to each plant mentioned the names of some standard books in which reliable drawings of the plant in question may be found; for though nature should always, if possible, be consulted, it may not at all times be within the power of the student to do so, owing to press of work, the season of the year, and many other disturbing causes.

The following books are thus referred to, the illustrations in them being of a trustworthy character. After the name of each book is the abbreviation used in the present work when it is necessary to quote it:--

The Flora Londinensis of Curtis. First Edition F. L. Medical Botany. Woodville. First Edition M. B. Medical Botany. Stephenson and Churchill. First Edition S. C. Illustrations of Natural Orders of Plants. E. Twining T. N. O. English Botany. Sowerby. Third Edition E. B. Vegetable World. Figuier V. W. School Botany. Lindley S. B. Woodlands, Heaths, and Hedges. Coleman W. H. H. Grammar of Ornament. Owen Jones G. O.

The first five on this list have coloured plates. To these we may be allowed to add Plant Form (P. F.), a work prepared by the author for the especial use of designers.

The plants described in the following pages are, to facilitate reference, arranged in regular alphabetical sequence, according to their English names, since most of my readers will more readily recognise a plant by its familiar title than by its botanical appellation. Thousands are familiar with the little daisy who would never recognise it in any description headed Bellis perennis. At the same time, we in every case give the scientific nomenclature as well, since in most works you may desire to consult, that will be of greater prominence than the one used colloquially. A difficulty here arises from the fact that several of our English flowers have numerous synonyms given to them; we have, however, chosen the name which we believe to be most commonly used, referring also to the others in the course of our remarks on the plant.

In the introduction of vegetable growth into any ornamental composition, we must be careful to remember that what is wanted is not so much a direct imitation of nature, which after all can only be faulty at the best, as a due adaptation of the natural form to the purpose of our design—a recognition of the impossibility of a close copy of nature, together with a feeling of its undesirableness even if it could be accomplished. Our representations must therefore be more or less conventional: in a flower-painting we naturally expect to see a direct transcript of nature, while in decorative art a direct transcript offends us.

"In the multitude of counsellors there is safety;" we will, therefore, here quote some few passages from the works of those whom we think we can all agree are entitled to speak with authority and to be heard with respect. Ruskin, in speaking on this subject, says,--"All noble ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work;" and again, "Ornamentation should be natural, that is to say, should in some degree express or adopt the beauty of natural objects; it does not hence follow that it should be an exact imitation of, or endeavour to supersede, God's work; it may consist only in a partial adoption of, and compliance with, the usual forms of natural things, without at all going to the point of imitation, and it is possible that the point of imitation may be closely reached by ornaments which nevertheless are entirely unfit for their place, and are the signs only of a degraded ambition and an ignorant dexterity.

Bad decorators err as easily on the side of imitating nature as of forgetting her, and the question of the exact degree in which imitation should be attempted under given circumstances is one of the most subtle and difficult in the whole range of criticism." Wornum thus defines the difference between naturalism and conventionalism: "A natural treatment implies natural imitation and arrangement, but an ornamental treatment does not necessarily exclude imitation in the parts, as, for instance, a scroll may be composed of strictly natural parts, but as no plant would grow in an exactly spiral direction, the scroll form constitutes the ornamental or conventional arrangement; we may, however, have conventionalism of details as well as conventionalism of arrangement." Hudson says,--"There is a great difference between the terms applied and adapted; they, in fact, express the wrong and the right use of vegetable forms.