Le Menianthe ou Trefle d’Eau (1787)

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.65 : 1
• published 1787
• Plate 54

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut — then, halfway, a line of Chinese poetry: how the ancients saw this same flower. After it, the flower's language, its season and homeland, its book; and at the end one line of classical prose — and a pair of eyes to take away.

1. 01

   First Look

   论画以形似，见与儿童邻。

   —— 宋·苏轼《书鄢陵王主簿所画折枝》

   To judge painting by likeness alone is the view of a child.

   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.

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, 0.8% of the sheet against 15.8% of foliage, the cast tending yellow-green — 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. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.65 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 19% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   Eighteenth-century plates are mostly copper engraving: hatched lines for shadow, then hand-colouring by another hand. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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.

6. 06

   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.

7. 07

   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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

8. 08

   Season and Place

   the rest of the year it is only a mass of leaves. Various: local hillside or a plant brought from overseas. The nineteenth-century botanic garden and glasshouse were their first address away from home. The year 1787 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.

9. 09

   The Book and the Hand

   “Cours de botanique” was drawn by Pierre Philippe Alyon and published 1787. This plate is Plate 54. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    人无癖不可与交，以其无深情也。

    —— 明·张岱《陶庵梦忆》

    Never make a friend of a man without an obsession: he has no deep feeling.

    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. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.