Camellia Luisa Bartoloni

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.40 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 187

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 where the orange is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 14 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.

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 13.8% of the sheet, foliage 17.1%, 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. 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 1.40 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 40% of the sheet, centred a little right of centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

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.

6. 06

   Season

   Late winter into early spring, blooming in the cold of the first lunar month; a single flower may last a fortnight. The year 1854 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Southwest China and Japan, with Yunnan the centre of diversity; when it reached Europe in the nineteenth century it was hailed as 'the rose of the East'. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “L'Illustration horticole” was drawn by Charles Antoine Lemaire and published 1854-1896. This plate is Plate 187. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   人卖山茶先谷雨，鸦随墦祭过清明。

   —— 宋·陆游《春晴自云门归三山》

   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.

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

11. 11

    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.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    Next time you stand before a flowering plant, give it three minutes: leaf arrangement, direction of the flower, the darkest patch. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1854.