Tree peony and canary (1892)
Ten ways of seeing
- broad 0.76 : 1
First Look
竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。
—— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》
A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.
Broad and horizontal: the eye travels side to side. Find where it stops. 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.
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
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.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.
Composition
Broad and horizontal — the format for groups or a whole plant with its roots. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.
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
红锦芙蓉碧牡丹，今番灯火减前番。
—— 唐·杨万里《郡中上元灯减旧例三之二而又迎送使客七首 其一》
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.
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'. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.
Season and Place
the whole show lasts barely twenty days. 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 1892 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
“Keibun Kachō Gafu” carries only Matsumura Keibun's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
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 1892 gave a whole day to a single flower.
