Paeonia Arborea Var. Elisabeth (1879)
Ten ways of seeing
- slightly upright 1.29 : 1
First Look
凡画山水，意在笔先。
—— 唐·王维《山水论》
In painting, the intention precedes the brush.
Slightly taller than wide; the eye lands above centre. 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.
Name and Thing
The binomial is Paeonia arborea: the first word is the genus it belongs among, the second the epithet that sets it apart. The genus name Paeonia: Paeonia is named for Paian, the physician of the Greek gods. No established Chinese name exists, so it is cited by its binomial alone.
Form and Colour
Herbaceous peonies die back each year, tree peonies keep woody stems; both have twice-trifoliate leaves and huge double blooms, often blotched at the petal base.No colour group is recorded. Three things fix the habit: leaf arrangement, tepal count, and how the flower is borne.
Composition
Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. Blank paper is not unfinished work: it is where the eye rests.
Line and Colour
In the later nineteenth century chromolithography took over: colour printed rather than painted, line demoted. Craft leaves franker evidence than inscriptions. 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.
Poetic Resonance
念桥边红药，年年知为谁生。
—— 宋·姜夔《扬州慢》
I think of the red peonies by the bridge — for whom do they bloom, year after year?
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.
Symbolism
The tree peony is 'national beauty and heavenly fragrance', an emblem of prosperity; the herbaceous peony is tenderness — given at parting, hence its name 'jiangli', 'about to leave'. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.
Season and Place
Late April to early May, around the Grain Rain solar term. Native to China: tree peonies centred on Luoyang, herbaceous ones on Yangzhou. Most garden peonies in Europe descend from eighteenth-century Chinese imports. The year 1879 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.
The Book and the Hand
“Nederlandsche flora en pomona” carries only Abraham Jacobus Wendel's name. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.
What to Take Away
If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. Two centuries on, the plant may still flower in some garden; the one on this sheet stopped in the season of 1879.
