Les liliacees Pl.05

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.66 : 1
• published 1805
• Plate 5

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

   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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 10 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 腹足纲 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour is sparing, 0.2% of the sheet against 0.8% of foliage, the cast tending yellow-green — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. 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. 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 1.66 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 2% of the sheet, centred a little left of 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

   Early to high summer, June and July; the flowers last only days, so artists drew them just as they opened. The year 1805 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.

7. 07

   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 1805-1816, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Les liliacees” was drawn by Pierre Joseph Redouté and published 1805-1816. This plate is Plate 5. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   方石斛栽香百合，小盆山养水黄杨。

   —— 宋·陆游《龟堂杂兴十首 其五》

   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.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    百合之根，以众瓣合成也。

    —— 明·李时珍《本草纲目·菜部》

    The root of the lily is many scales gathered into one — hence the name bai he, “a hundred joined”.

    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. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.