Mon Jardin a Ceylan Pl.055 (1896)

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.39 : 1
• published 1896
• Plate 55

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

   论画以形似，见与儿童邻。

   —— 宋·苏轼《书鄢陵王主簿所画折枝》

   To judge painting by likeness alone is the view of a child.

   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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there.

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 1.4% of the sheet, foliage 10.3%, the cast yellow-green with a second note of amber. 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.No colour group is recorded. 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 1.39 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 20% of the sheet, centred a little left of 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. Take a loupe to three places: petal edge, leaf vein, caption. An unbroken line means engraving; colour crossing the outline means a hand. 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

   海客谈瀛洲，烟涛微茫信难求。

   —— 唐·李白《梦游天姥吟留别》

   Seafarers talk of Yingzhou, lost in mist and waves, truly hard to find.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and 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. In a flora it is a species first and a symbol second; the order is worth keeping.

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 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

   “Mon Jardin a Ceylan” was drawn by George De Alwis and published 1896. This plate is Plate 55. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    人无癖不可与交，以其无深情也。

    —— 明·张岱《陶庵梦忆》

    Never make a friend of a man without an obsession: he has no deep feeling.

    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. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.