A practice sheet of chrysanthemum studies in East Asian ink — thirty or more individual flower forms distributed across the picture field, each one an exercise in the chrysanthemum mark vocabulary. The chrysanthemum is one of the four noble plants of traditional Chinese painting (alongside plum, orchid, and bamboo), and Sidney's engagement with it confirms that his East Asian practice extended beyond bamboo into the full botanical tradition.
The forms vary systematically from top to bottom. In the upper portion, the largest and most fully realized flowers — perhaps fifteen marks each, the petals rendered in careful curved strokes that build the form from center outward, each petal a single brushstroke. As the eye moves downward, the forms become progressively more reduced: fewer petals, lighter pressure, the marks beginning to abbreviate toward the minimum necessary to suggest chrysanthemum-ness without describing it. At the bottom, the smallest marks are barely four strokes each — the flower reduced to its essential gesture.
This progression from full to reduced is a teaching method: the student learns the form completely, then learns to let it go, until only the essence remains. Whether Sidney was learning from a teacher, a book, or from his own sustained observation cannot be known — but the disciplined progression suggests methodical study rather than intuitive exploration.
At the lower right, a single flower on a visible stem — the most plant-like and the most complete of the forms — provides a naturalistic anchor to the abstract practice above it.