Mon Jardin a Ceylan Pl.111 (1896)

Ten ways of seeing

• measured cast crimson
• upright 1.36 : 1
• published 1896
• Plate 111

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

   真山水之川谷，远望之以取其势，近看之以取其质。

   —— 宋·郭熙《林泉高致·山水训》

   Mountains and valleys: from afar take their momentum, up close take their texture — the two distances from which any picture is read.

   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 magenta 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 32.0% of the sheet, foliage 1.8%, the cast crimson 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 magenta — a crimson-magenta, 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 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. 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

   日啖荔枝三百颗，不辞长作岭南人。

   —— 宋·苏轼《食荔枝》

   Three hundred lychees a day — I would not mind being a southerner all my life.

   The poem gives the mood first and the picture supplies the form; set the line beside the plate and the magenta 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 magenta, 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

   flowering follows the first rains, so a month on the plate often means 'after the rain'. 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. Read the locality and the flowering season both with a discount: one is hearsay, the other a ten-day peak.

9. 09

   The Book and the Hand

   “Mon Jardin a Ceylan” was drawn by George De Alwis and published 1896. This plate is Plate 111. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    投我以木瓜，报之以琼琚。匪报也，永以为好也。

    —— 《诗经·卫风·木瓜》

    You toss me a quince, I return a jade pendant — not as payment, but so that we may be friends for ever.

    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.