Narrow-leaved Peony
Narrow-leaved Peony
Narrow-leaved Peony
Ten ways of seeing
- measured cast red
- upright 1.58 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
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 where the red is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.
Name and Thing
No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.
Form and Colour
Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 15.2% of the sheet, foliage 12.2%, the cast red with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Herbaceous peonies die back each year, tree peonies keep woody stems; both have twice-trifoliate leaves and huge double blooms, often blotched at the petal base. Filed under red — a red close to carmine, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
The sheet is tall. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 32% of the sheet, centred near the centre — the easy measure most florists kept to.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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. If you mean to copy it: block in the broad shapes and colours first, detail last; lithographic softness comes from thin washes — two or three pale layers will get you close.
Poetic Resonance
重华直至牡丹芳，其来有渐非今日。
—— 唐·白居易《牡丹芳》
The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the red the corolla becomes its resting point.
Symbolism
The tree peony is 'national beauty and heavenly fragrance', an emblem of prosperity; the herbaceous peony is tenderness — given at parting, hence its name 'jiangli', 'about to leave'. This plate leans red, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late April to early May, around the Grain Rain solar term. Native to China: tree peonies centred on Luoyang, herbaceous ones on Yangzhou. Most garden peonies in Europe descend from eighteenth-century Chinese imports. The year 1896 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The bud and the ripe fruit on one branch tell the season; the name in the title often tells the journey.
The Book and the Hand
“Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse” carries only Edward Step's name. From drawing to plate the sheet passed through several hands — the engraver aimed at accuracy, the colourist at speed, and between them lies each plate's unevenness.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1896 gave a whole day to a single flower.
About this plate
Narrow-leaved Peony is plate 94, from Favourite flowers of garden and greenhouse, drawn by Edward Step. This public-domain plate is reproduced at high resolution, free to view and download. Publication: New York, Frederick Warne & Co, 1896-1897.
