Les liliacees Pl.65

Twelve ways of seeing

• upright 1.65 : 1
• published 1805
• Plate 65

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 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

   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 1.65 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

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. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

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 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 65. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   梨花淡白柳深青，柳絮飞时花满城。

   —— 宋·苏轼《东栏梨花》

   Pear blossoms pale white, willows deep green; when the catkins fly, flowers fill the town.

   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. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.

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

    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.