Mon Jardin a Ceylan Pl.257 (1896)

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• upright 1.43 : 1
• published 1896
• Plate 257

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 the darkest small patch: the whole tonal order is measured from there. The pose leans left: the upper half carries 17 points further left than the lower — a living thing, not a diagram.

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 is sparing, 0.3% of the sheet against 12.2% of foliage, the cast tending yellow-green — as with pale or white blooms, outline and tone do the talking. 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. 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 1.43 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 13% of the sheet, centred below 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. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions.

6. 06

   Season

   The tropics have no four seasons, only wet and dry; flowering follows the first rains, so a month on the plate often means 'after the rain'. The year 1896 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The plate records ten days of peak; the other three hundred are leaf, fruit and rest.

7. 07

   Provenance

   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. In the same volume the kin are shelved together; set several plates side by side.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Mon Jardin a Ceylan” was drawn by George De Alwis and published 1896. This plate is Plate 257. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   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 corolla becomes its resting point.

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. Keep the line; it will surface the next time you meet the same plant.

11. 11

    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. Meanings change their tune: the same flower can say opposite things within a century.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1896 gave a whole day to a single flower.