Nelis (1924)

Twelve ways of seeing

• measured cast amber
• upright 1.31 : 1
• published 1924
• Plate 12

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

   搜尽奇峰打草稿。

   —— 清·石涛《苦瓜和尚画语录》

   Exhaust the strange peaks, and then make the sketch.

   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 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 10.9% of the sheet, foliage 0.0%, the cast amber with a second note of yellow-green. No other plate shares exactly this measure. A bulb of overlapping fleshy scales gives the lily its Chinese name, 'hundred-fold'; six tepals reflex as the flower opens, around six stamens with long, T-shaped anthers.No colour group is recorded. Read the outline, then the colour layers, then the brush.

4. 04

   Composition

   Tall and narrow, the plant rising in one movement with generous margins — the upright format of most floras. (about 1.31 : 1) No details are appended: a plate for looking, not for keying out. The plant covers only 12% of the sheet, centred below centre; the emptiness is where the eye rests. Old plates set the plant slightly off centre, with unequal margins — that small imbalance is what keeps it alive.

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

   Early to high summer, June and July; the flowers last only days, so artists drew them just as they opened. 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 north — China, Japan, Europe. Long used in Chinese medicine, lilies were hunted in East Asia by nineteenth-century collectors and transformed European gardens. 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 12. The image is public domain; the hand-colouring is still one person's hand.

9. 09

   Poetic Resonance

   故乡寒食荼醾发，百合香浓邸舍深。

   —— 宋·宋祁《山橙花》

   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

    生川谷。《吴普》曰：百合一名重迈，一名中庭，生冠朐及荆山。（艺文类聚引云：一名重匡）《名医》曰：一名重箱，一名摩罗，一名中逢花，一名强瞿，生荆州，二月八月，采根，暴干。

    —— 神农本草经·百合第一百七十

    The Bencao Gangmu describes the bulb as garlic-like, edible and medicinal; Song writers already noted that the leaves vary while the flowers stay white. You need not parse every word: take the line, and the flower acquires a second face.

11. 11

    Symbolism

    In the West the white lily is Marian purity, held by the angel of the Annunciation; in China the name sounds like 'a hundred years in harmony', a wedding wish. 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

    Appreciation is not knowledge but habit — one more look each time. A flora exists to be consulted; look long enough and you forget to consult — someone in 1924 gave a whole day to a single flower.