Ledenbergia roseo-ænea

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast red
• broad 0.67 : 1
• published 1854
• Plate 66

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.

   Broad and horizontal: the eye travels side to side. Find where it stops. 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

   No reliable binomial survives, so the printed title must serve. The Chinese name 清辉木属 is a modern rendering of the Latin, not an old garden name.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 42.6% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast red with a second note of amber. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Roses are shrubs or scramblers with pinnate leaves of three to seven serrated leaflets; the double flowers open in crumpled, inward-curling layers around a small knot of yellow stamens. Filed under red — a red close to carmine, built in washes from a pale ground. A single plant, laid out with nothing hidden.

4. 04

   Composition

   Broad and horizontal — the format for groups or a whole plant with its roots. (about 0.67 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant fills 49% of the sheet, centred near the 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. 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

   有情芍药含春泪，无力蔷薇卧晓枝。

   —— 宋·秦观《春日》

   The peony, feeling, holds spring tears; the rose, strengthless, lies across the morning branch.

   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.

7. 07

   Symbolism

   In Europe the rose means love and secrecy ('sub rosa'); in Chinese verse the rambling rose leans and clings — lingering attachment rather than ardour. This plate leans red, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

8. 08

   Season and Place

   Late spring into early summer, peaking in May — the first flush of the garden year. Widespread in the temperate north. Chinese gardeners knew roses since the Han. 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 66. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    插花不可太繁，亦不可太瘦。多不过二种三种，高低疏密，如画苑布置方妙。

    —— 明·袁宏道《瓶史·宜称》

    Flowers should be set neither too crowded nor too sparse — two or three kinds at most, tall and low, dense and open, arranged as a painter would compose.

    Tradition places roses in the Han imperial park; Song and Ming manuals named the double forms 'Baoxiang' and 'Ten Sisters', and Qing compendia separated rose, rugosa and monthly rose. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.