Azalea Painting

These long, curved stamens that sign the Azalea Paintings

Where does this prickling of filaments around the corollas come from?

On the Azalea Paintings, the petals have barely finished opening when filaments already escape, curved downwards then straightened into a crook, each ending in an orange or golden tip. This is not a painter's fancy: the brush followed stamens actually longer than the corolla, which the flower tends outwards instead of keeping them in the cup of the calyx. The line also thins as it moves away from the heart, until it is nothing more than a golden hair. Each corolla thus projects lines beyond its own outline, and the canvas refuses to close on a simple circle of color.

This peculiarity changes everything when it comes to hanging. A peony or a rose painted forms a closed mass, which the eye envelops in one go; here, the gaze follows the filaments to their tip, leaves the flower, then returns. The canvas visually occupies more space than its actual surface, which allows it to stand alone on a large wall without appearing lost. It is also why these works do not support being crowded together: they demand the emptiness around them.

Five filaments, and not ten: the eye cuts before the botanist

Count the stamens of a corolla on these Azalea Paintings: they rarely exceed five. The detail is nothing anecdotal, it is the sharing that gardeners have used for two centuries between the azalea and its cousin the rhododendron, which aligns double. Five filaments reveal the back of the flower, ten fill it and form a tight tuft at the center. The painters of these canvases respected this count, and that is what makes the drawing readable from three meters: you can still distinguish the architecture of the flower where a painted rhododendron would give only a mass.

Why do these orange tips illuminate an entire Azalea Painting?

It's the detail that you notice last and that you can't leave: at the end of each filament of an Azalea Painting, an orange anther, sometimes frankly golden, no larger than a grain of rice. The plant lodges its pollen there, and this warm color comes to contrast with the ivory background as with the dark green of the leaves. These tiny points act on the wall like small embers : they respond to the brass of a handle, the copper of a lamp, the waxed wood of an antique piece of furniture, and are enough to connect the canvas to the rest of the room.

Turquoise, powder blue and golden highlights : the invented palette of the Azalea Paintings

Does a turquoise azalea exist in the garden?

Nowhere, and that's the whole point. The Azalea Paintings bring back a turquoise and a powder blue that no mass has ever produced: the real flower goes from white to pink, coral, red, mauve, and stops there. This blue comes from the colorist, not from the plant. It extends an ancient tradition, that of botanical prints embellished by hand and gouaches painted in China for export, where the flower was given to the taste of a distant buyer rather than the truth of the garden. These canvases assume the gap: they show a dreamed azalea, never a cataloged azalea.

This gap has a very concrete consequence. A flower painted in its exact shades remains a garden memory and is limited to rooms that like vegetation; an azalea turned turquoise becomes an object of color in its own right. It then goes with a faience, an indigo fabric, a sea green wall as well as a wooded interior, without ever sounding like a reminder of gardening. This is what allows these canvases to be placed in a living room as in a dining room, instead of being reserved for the veranda.

Are these golden highlights that marble the Azalea Paintings invented?

Look at the edge of the petals on the Azalea Paintings: a clearer, often golden, line runs along it, blurring as it goes, as if the color had fled outwards. The plant does this for real. The azalea is famous for its whims: a branch suddenly gives a bordered, flamed or variegated flower, different from all its neighbors, and horticulturalists of the century of greenhouses built entire collections on these color shifts that they sought to fix. Painting these highlights is painting the very instability of the flower, hence this impression that no corolla exactly copies its neighbor.

Why this salmon coral rather than the pink of garden azaleas?

Follow the coral of one painting to another: never a frank pink, always this salmon red drawn towards orange, lightened with ivory at the back of the corolla and repeated in darker in the veins. It is the exact shade of azaleas that were forced in greenhouses to make them bloom in the middle of winter, and the Azalea Paintings have not changed a tone. Placed on the ivory background, surrounded by the dark green of the foliage, this color replays the only bright note of a house in January. It is a color of cold season, not of full summer : it warms rooms where the day arrives late and leaves early.

The ivory void of the Azalea Paintings, or the memory of herbarium sheets

Neither vase nor horizon: why are these azaleas floating on ivory?

It comes from further away than you think. The ivory background surrounding the flowers in the Azalea Paintings is not a convenient backdrop: it's a page. The azalea arrived here by boat, and long before plants survived the journey, it was known in Europe only through dried twigs glued to sheets and colored engravings. The collection inherits this herbarium layout, where the plant floats alone in the middle of the paper, without landscape, without vase, without horizon. Nothing comes to compete with the flower, and the gaze has only one place to rest.

On the wall, this emptiness works for you. An ivory background reflects the light from the room rather than absorbing it, so the canvas brightens its corner of the wall rather than darkening it. The flower appears all the more distinct because it has nothing around it, and the whole installation works just as well on a light wall, where it blends by the margin, as on a deep shade, where the rectangle of ivory acts as a sharp cut. That's why these works don't require a dedicated wall for them.

Closed bud, open flower: the rule inherited from herbariums

Take a canvas at random: next to the corolla wide open, a bud still closed and tapered, then a leaf and a section of woody stem. Four states of the plant on the same image, exactly what the botanical plate required to be able to identify the species, and the Azalea Paintings have kept this discipline. The azalea lent itself better than others, because its flowers open in a tight bouquet, some first, others later. The canvas therefore contains time : a before, a now, a soon. This is what saves it from a frozen decor and gives the impression, some mornings, that it has moved slightly.

The January potted flower, resurrected by the Azalea Paintings

The Azalea Paintings show the flower as we never see it long enough: the cluster at the height of its opening, coral on ivory, without the gilded pot or the florist's crystal paper. Those who received this plant one January recognize the color immediately; those who have cultivated it recognize the fine, dark foliage as well, painted here twig by twig. Others see only a strange flower, bristling with golden threads, and that is one more reason to hang it where the sun never shines: landing, north-facing room, blind corridor.

FAQ on azalea paintings

Do these canvases show azaleas or rhododendrons?

Both plants belong to the same family, which fuels the confusion. On these canvases, three signs are decisive: fine, long, few stamens, about five per flower instead of double; a corolla in a wide and thin funnel; a fine, dark and tight foliage, very far from the large, armored leaves of the rhododendron. The collection therefore remains on the side of the azalea, the lightest and most drawn of the two.

Why is it called an Indian azalea for a flower from China?

The name comes from the route, not the country. The first plants traveled through the trading posts and ships of the East India Companies, and the label remained stuck to the plant while its ancestors grew on Chinese hills. This misunderstanding can still be read here: the painted flower is that of European greenhouses, forced to open in winter, with its softened coral and its ivory, rather than a wild mountain azalea.

What is offered with a painted azalea rather than a potted flower?

The azalea pot is a winter gift that rarely makes it to spring: it's given covered in flowers, it exhausts itself, and it's thrown away. These canvases take the opposite approach, retaining the cluster at the peak of its bloom. In China, this flower bears the name of a bird and has long carried a reputation for nostalgia, for a land that is missed. Offering it in this way is to offer a return, not a season's end.