Nerium odorum var. lutuem

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.55 : 1
• published 1818
• Plate 14

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

   夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。

   —— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》

   Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.

   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 orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Nerium odorum: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. Two words carry a whole provenance. The Chinese name 夹竹桃属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 8.1% of the sheet, foliage 10.4%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Flowering trees and shrubs put out branches first; blossoms open before or with the leaves, usually five thin, translucent petals around a cluster of fine stamens. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. 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 1.55 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 20% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.

5. 05

   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.

6. 06

   Season

   Mid spring: plum first, then peach and apricot, cherry last — the season keeps its order. The year 1818 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

7. 07

   Provenance

   East Asia and temperate Eurasia. Plum, peach and apricot are Chinese in origin, grown for three thousand years; cherry and crabapple went east to Japan and west to Europe. The volume was made in 1818-1824, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Flora Italiana” was drawn by Gaetano Savi and published 1818-1824. This plate is Plate 14. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   桃之夭夭，灼灼其华。

   —— 《诗经·周南·桃夭》

   The peach tree, young and graceful, its blossoms blazing bright.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the corolla becomes its resting point.

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.

    Lin Bu of Hangzhou famously took the plum as his wife and the crane as his son; the Book of Songs already used peach blossom to open a wedding song. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    Plum is solitude, peach is marriage, apricot is spring itself, crabapple is a fragile fate; the hibiscus, opening at dawn and falling at dusk, is impermanence. This plate leans orange, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.