Mon Jardin a Ceylan Pl.019 (1896)

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.36 : 1
• published 1896
• Plate 19

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

   江馆清秋，晨起看竹，烟光日影露气，皆浮动于疏枝密叶之间。

   —— 清·郑板桥《题画竹》

   On an autumn morning at the river lodge I looked at the bamboo: mist, sunlight, dew, all drifting among the sparse and dense leaves.

   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 yellow 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. Neither name nor binomial survives: the printed title must do.

3. 03

   Form and Colour

   Measured on this plate: flower colour covers 4.9% of the sheet, foliage 12.9%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Tropical plants defy temperate habits: heavy, saturated flowers with strong scent, leathery or dissected leaves, stems that climb, swell, or reduce to spines. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, 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 1.36 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 19% of the sheet, centred above centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. 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

   无事将心寄柳条，等闲书字满芭蕉。

   —— 唐·李益《逢歸信偶寄》

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

7. 07

   Symbolism

   In China these plants carry no classical symbolism; their meaning is newness — new worlds, new species, new trade routes. They show natural history's expanding edge. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

8. 08

   Season and Place

   The tropics have no four seasons, only wet and dry. Central and South America, Southeast Asia, India, Ceylon. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists either sailed with the ships or drew from living specimens under glass. The year 1896 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The volume was made in 1896, when most of this knowledge came from living plants under glass.

9. 09

   The Book and the Hand

   “Mon Jardin a Ceylan” was drawn by George De Alwis and published 1896. This plate is Plate 19. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    气之动物，物之感人，故摇荡性情，形诸舞咏。

    —— 南朝梁·钟嵘《诗品序》

    The vital breath moves things, things move men, and the stirred heart takes shape in song.

    Ji Han's fourth-century Records of the Plants of the South is China's earliest regional flora; Europe's counterpart was the exotic flora brought home by voyages — both by-products of empire and trade. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.