Large-flowered African Blue-Lily
Large-flowered African Blue-Lily
Large-flowered African Blue-Lily
About this plate
Large-flowered African Blue-Lily is plate 543, from Edwards' Botanical Register, drawn by Sydenham Edwards, John Lindley. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: London, James Ridgway, 1829-1847.
Twelve ways of seeing
- measured cast yellow-green
- slightly upright 1.21 : 1
- published 1829
- Plate 543
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.
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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.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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.
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Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
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Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 3.3% of the sheet, foliage 2.2%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A bulb of overlapping fleshy scales gives the lily its Chinese name, 'hundred-fold'; six tepals reflex as the flower opens, around six stamens with long, T-shaped anthers.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
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Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. (about 1.21 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 33% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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Line and Colour
The first half of the nineteenth century moved from copper to steel to lithography; stipple could render the softest transition. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful.
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Season
Early to high summer, June and July; the flowers last only days, so artists drew them just as they opened. The year 1829 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.
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Provenance
Temperate north — China, Japan, Europe. Long used in Chinese medicine, lilies were hunted in East Asia by nineteenth-century collectors and transformed European gardens. The volume was made in 1829-1847, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.
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The Book and the Hand
“Edwards' Botanical Register” was drawn by Sydenham Edwards, John Lindley and published 1829-1847. This plate is Plate 543. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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Poetic Resonance
故乡寒食荼醾发，百合香浓邸舍深。
—— 宋·宋祁《山橙花》
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.
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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.
The Bencao Gangmu describes the bulb as garlic-like, edible and medicinal; Song writers already noted that the leaves vary while the flowers stay white. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.
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Symbolism
In the West the white lily is Marian purity, held by the angel of the Annunciation; in China the name sounds like 'a hundred years in harmony', a wedding wish. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
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What to Take Away
Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1829 gave a whole day to a single flower.
