Camellia Petazzi

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• upright 1.52 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 230

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

   竖划三寸，当千仞之高；横墨数尺，体百里之迥。

   —— 南朝宋·宗炳《画山水序》

   A vertical stroke of three inches stands for a cliff of a thousand fathoms; a few feet of ink holds a hundred li.

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

2. 02

   Name and Thing

   The binomial is Camellia petazzi: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Camellia: Camellia honours Georg Kamel, the Moravian Jesuit who first described the plant in the Philippines. 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 23.3% of the sheet, foliage 19.1%, the cast red. 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 red — a red close to carmine, 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 1.52 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 47% of the sheet, centred above centre — the herbarium way, drawn to be read whole. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. 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

   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 best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.

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

9. 09

   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 red 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 red, 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

    Carry three rules away: whole before detail; line before colour; picture before book. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1854 gave a whole day to a single flower.