Camellia Comte de Toll

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.58 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 115

Not a catalogue entry but a way of looking: how to stand, what to notice, how the line was cut — then, halfway, a line of Chinese poetry: how the ancients saw this same flower. After it, the flower's language, its season and homeland, its book; and at the end one line of classical prose — and a pair of eyes to take away.

1. 01

   First Look

   夫象物必在于形似，形似须全其骨气。

   —— 唐·张彦远《历代名画记》

   Likeness is the threshold; bone-and-breath is the point.

   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 orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch.

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   Only the genus Camellia is given; species-level names came later. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 20.6% of the sheet, foliage 18.7%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Camellias are evergreen shrubs with thick, waxen, serrate leaves; the double flowers overlap like roof tiles and fall whole, petals still attached. Filed under orange — an amber orange, built in washes from a pale ground. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.58 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 41% of the sheet, centred above centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Decide first whether it was printed or painted; only then discuss whether it is beautiful. 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.

6. 06

   Poetic Resonance

   东园三日雨兼风，桃李飘零扫地空。惟有山茶偏耐久，绿丛又放数枝红。

   —— 宋·陆游《山茶》

   Three days of wind and rain in the east garden: peach and plum are swept away. Only the camellia endures, putting out a few more red sprays from the green.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the orange the corolla becomes its resting point.

7. 07

   Symbolism

   In China the camellia is the friend that endures; in Europe it became Eastern beauty and unattainability, and after La Dame aux Camélias, a token of brief life. This plate leans orange, 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.

8. 08

   Season and Place

   Late winter into early spring, blooming in the cold of the first lunar month. when it reached Europe in the nineteenth century it was hailed as 'the rose of the East'. The year 1854 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.

9. 09

   The Book and the Hand

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 115. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    茗赏者上也，谭赏者次也，酒赏者下也。

    —— 明·袁宏道《瓶史·清赏》

    To enjoy flowers with tea is best, with talk second, with wine the least — what is ranked is the viewer's mind, not the flower.

    Ming flower manuals list dozens of camellia varieties; the Bencao Gangmu presses oil from the seeds and brews the leaves — the plant belongs to both flower lore and pharmacy. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.