Les liliacees Pl.23

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.53 : 1
• published 1805
• Plate 23

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

   六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。

   —— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》

   The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.

   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 yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 13 points further right 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 covers 27.5% of the sheet, foliage 4.0%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. 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. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, 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 1.53 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant takes about 32% of the sheet, centred above centre — the easy measure most florists kept to. 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. 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.

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. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Les liliacees” was drawn by Pierre Joseph Redouté and published 1805-1816. This plate is Plate 23. 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 yellow the corolla becomes its resting point.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    生川谷。《吴普》曰：百合一名重迈，一名中庭，生冠朐及荆山。（艺文类聚引云：一名重匡）《名医》曰：一名重箱，一名摩罗，一名中逢花，一名强瞿，生荆州，二月八月，采根，暴干。

    —— 神农本草经·百合第一百七十

    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. This plate leans yellow, 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.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.