Hanaskogsäpple (1924)

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast yellow-green
• slightly upright 1.28 : 1
• published 1924
• Plate 79

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

   六法者何？一、气韵生动是也；二、骨法用笔是也；三、应物象形是也；四、随类赋彩是也；五、经营位置是也；六、传移模写是也。

   —— 南齐·谢赫《古画品录》

   The six laws: spirit resonance alive; bone-method in the brush; matching form; colour by kind; planning the placing; copying the masters.

   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 where the yellow is deepest: the whole tonal order is measured from that patch. The pose leans right: the upper half carries 11 points further right 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 covers 18.8% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. Fruit plates pair the whole fruit with a section: the outline identifies the variety, the cut reveals skin thickness, core size and seed arrangement — the evidence of registration. Filed under yellow — a honey-yellow, built in washes from a pale ground. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Slightly taller than wide, the plant set a little above centre. (about 1.28 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 24% of the sheet, centred a little left of centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Cover the margins with your thumb and the plate suffocates; uncover them and the flower breathes again.

5. 05

   Line and Colour

   After 1900 photography and colour reproduction ran alongside watercolour: accuracy rose, the cut of the burin disappeared. There is evidence on the back too: the plate mark pressed into the paper, the slight relief of the pigment, lines worn shallow in a later printing.

6. 06

   Season

   Late summer into autumn, variety by variety; a fruit portfolio spans the whole harvest. The year 1924 on the plate is that of publication, not of flowering — the gathering came a year or two earlier. The best time to read such a plate is its flowering season: three minutes under the tree explains what no text can.

7. 07

   Provenance

   Temperate fruits came mostly from Eurasia, later from the Americas. Nineteenth-century nurseries printed varietal albums for trade and exhibition: every fruit on the page was a saleable claim. The localities on the plate are those of a century ago; plants travel and places change their names.

8. 08

   The Book and the Hand

   “Swedish fruit varieties (Svenska fruktsorter)” was drawn by Henriette Sjöberg and published 1924. This plate is Plate 79. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   一年好景君须记，最是橙黄橘绿时。

   —— 宋·苏轼《赠刘景文》

   Remember the best of the year: the time of yellow oranges and green tangerines.

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

10. 10

    The Written Tradition

    后皇嘉树，橘徕服兮。受命不迁，生南国兮。

    —— 战国·屈原《九章·橘颂》

    O lovely tree, the orange, sent to serve here below; you take your charge and will not move, born in the southern land.

    The Book of Songs has a quince given and a jade pendant returned — fruit as ritual gift already in pre-Qin China. The difference is not of quality but of question: Europe asks what it is, China asks whom it resembles.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In China the pomegranate means many sons, the peach long life, the orange good fortune; in Europe the apple is temptation and knowledge, the grape abundance and sacrifice. This plate leans yellow, which in flower language adds one more degree of feeling. Flower language was added later; the flower knows nothing of it, and that innocence is part of its power.

12. 12

    What to Take Away

    If you keep one line, keep Guo Xi's: from afar its momentum, up close its texture. The flower of that year is dust, yet its image on paper has outlived every living cousin.