Week 17: Discussion

Floriography

Flowers have meaning. Floriography is a language of flowers that has been used for thousands of years. Though the meanings of flowers have varied over the years and between cultures, flowers have long been used to send coded messages.

Examples of the meaning, the symbolism, the language of flowers can be found in this web edition of The Old Farmer's Almanac

 (Links to an external site.)

 which is based mostly on Victorian symbolism. In it, we can see that the peony symbolizes a bashful, happy life. Roses have multiple meanings depending on color. Red roses say "I love you," dark crimson roses represent mourning, pink is happiness, white says "I'm worthy of you," and yellow represents jealousy, decrease of love, and infidelity.

Japan has its own language of flowers called hanakotoba, information about which can be found in this Wikipedia article

 (Links to an external site.)

. The meanings of peonies and roses, this week's painting subjects, are shown below. As can be seen, roses have multiple meanings in Japanese, too, depending on color, some of which are similar to the western versions.

The language of flowers discussed above assumes that only one type of flower is being referenced. A new dimension is added when multiple flowers and/or objects are at hand as can been seen below.

Multiple Painting Subject Compositions

Last semester, we studied the shikunshi subjects, four plants (orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum, & plum) that have been popular with Chinese and Japanese artists for centuries. Their popularity is based on a sense that these plants are nobler in some way than others. Beginning artists need to use all of the basic sumi-e strokes to paint them, yet the subjects lend themselves to considerable sophistication of expression. It is said that the shikunshi subjects are among the first learned but last mastered of all painting subjects.

For the most part we worked on painting individual plants, but multiple shikunshi subjects can appear together in compositions. This goes for other plants and even animals in some cases, too. Many combination subjects have special names and meanings as shown in the chart below.

The painting subject for this week is one of these combinations; Wealth & Prosperity (Fūkichōshun) featuring peonies and roses together.

About Peonies and Roses

Our focus last week was on peonies, so I'm not going to do much with them today except for the demonstration painting.

Regarding roses, there are about 300 species of roses worldwide--most are native to Asia, but North America, Europe, and Africa have native species, too. Over 10,000 cultivated varieties exist worldwide. All wild roses are much simpler than cultivated varieties. The photo below is one example.

The kind of rose represented in fūkichōshun combination paintings is typically a kōshinbara or China Rose. Other names for the kōshinbara are chōshun (China or Bengal Rose) and shikizakiibara (that's both a name and the information that it is an autumn blooming flower). Kōshinbara are shrubs that grow from one to two meters tall and can form thickets.

The fruit, rose hips, mature in late summer through the autumn. Rose hips are eatable, though if eaten raw, care must be taken to avoid hairs inside the fruit which are a component of itching powders. Among the uses of rose hips are ingredients of jams, jellies, syrup, rose hip soup, bread, pies, and marmalade. Beverages that can use them include herbal teas and wine. Wild rose hips are high in vitamin C. The amount in cultivated rose varieties varies considerably.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find classical Japanese artwork that featured both peonies and roses, but the following two ukiyo-e prints, both by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) feature the China Rose (kōshinbara). The first was done sometime around 1843 to 1847.

This second picture featuring kōshinbara and Mandarin Ducks (oshidori) was done sometime in the 1840s.