Les liliacees Pl.15

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast blue
• upright 1.56 : 1
• published 1805
• Plate 15

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

   真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。

   —— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》

   Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.

   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.

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, 0.9% of the sheet against 12.5% of foliage, the cast tending blue — 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. 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 1.56 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 15% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

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. Note the season. Phenology is the most practical tool of appreciation.

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 localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Les liliacees” was drawn by Pierre Joseph Redouté and published 1805-1816. This plate is Plate 15. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   木末芙蓉花，山中发红萼。涧户寂无人，纷纷开且落。

   —— 唐·王维《辛夷坞》

   Lotus blossoms at the branch tips put forth red calyces in the hills. By the silent ravine, they open and fall, open and fall.

   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. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.

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. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1805.