La Véronique en Épi (1787)

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.58 : 1
• published 1787
• Plate 99

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut, when it flowers, where it came from, who made it — and then the poems and the classics that taught China to see the same flower. Read the twelve in order and the plate opens.

1. 01

   First Look

   六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。

   —— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》

   The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.

   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. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 11 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour is sparing, 0.4% of the sheet against 1.9% of foliage, the cast tending amber — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. A botanical plate: one plant lifted from field or glasshouse and set at the centre of the sheet, root, stem, leaf, flower and fruit in turn, made legible, citable, transmissible.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.58 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 3% of the sheet, centred near the centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing.

6. 06

   Season

   Plates usually record flowering, the fortnight when a plant is most identifiable; the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. The year 1787 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Cours de botanique” was drawn by Pierre Philippe Alyon and published 1787. This plate is Plate 99. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   天地有大美而不言，四时有明法而不议。

   —— 《庄子·知北游》

   Heaven and earth have great beauty and do not speak.

   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.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。

    —— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》

    The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form to the object; colour according to kind; planning the placing; transcribing and copying.

    China had the Bencao Gangmu and the Illustrated Study of Plant Names and Realities; Europe moved from herbal woodcuts to chromolithography. Both trusted pictures to finish what words could not. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    The symbolism of such a plate lies not in flower lore but in record: the belief that a plant deserves to be drawn accurately — the plainest ethic of the scientific age. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1787 gave a whole day to a single flower.