Qingming scroll transformed into giant clay sculpture

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The Chinese painting "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" is considered a masterpiece. Its depiction of ancient Bianjing, the capital of North Song Dynasty some 1,000 years ago, has been transformed into many other art forms over the years, including papercut, embroidery and porcelain. But if even those aren't enough to draw you back into the magic of old China, just take a look at this version. It's the world-renowned painting as a giant clay sculpture.

A real Bianjing city in clay with peddlers peddling, riders riding, butchers butchering, and a painter observing. This is like Pompeii unearthed into sunlight, or Sleeping Beauty in her the castle awaiting a kiss to wake up.

The footmarks on the Silkroad of the camels have already been wiped clean by the wind as they arrived at the city gate. At the dock, porters were busily unloading the goods shipped to the heart of the empire from all directions. This is also the most classic scene in the Qingming Scroll - Rainbow Bridge, with people of all walks of life strolling above while boats shuttle to and fro.

All the figures are at a two-thirds life-size scale including the houses and boats. Wandering about the clay world is like travelling through time.

World-renowned painting as a giant clay sculpture

The Clay Sculpture Garden of Qingming Scroll was begun in 2007 and is as larger than 18 soccer fields put together. There are over 500 figures recreated from the painting.

According to the organizer, every figure took at least four days to finish. And the total cost is more than 180 million U.S. dollars.

Zhang Li, Malongwan Clay Sculpture Garden, said, "I hope more people will come to enjoy our Qingming Scroll Garden. And I hope it can help inherit and develop our traditional culture."

So the next time you feel like travelling through time, perhaps the Qingming Scroll Garden in Tangshan of Hebei Province is just the right place and time.

World-renowned painting as a giant clay sculpture

World-renowned painting as a giant clay sculpture

World-renowned painting as a giant clay sculpture

Grid lines in medieval Chinese scrolls: Functionality or design?

From Chinese manuscripts by Imre Galambos
Medieval manuscript scrolls are often ruled with grid lines to guide the hand of the calligrapher. These lines are a basic feature of most standard Buddhist and Taoist scrolls, which typically have 17 characters per line and 27-28 (or 31) lines per sheet of paper. But other types of manuscripts with less standard layout also often employed the same system of grid lines. There are usually two horizontal grid lines, one at the top of the sheet and one at the bottom, creating a margin of an inch or two on both ends. The vertical grid lines are drawn to connect the horizontal ones, and the characters are then written between the vertical strips created this way. This produces an even and aesthetically pleasing appearance. In some cases, the vertical grid lines or the horizontal ones can also be missing, which surprisingly does not seem to affect the quality of calligraphy. Manuscript Or.8210/S.230 (Plate 1) below is a typical example of the use of vertical and horizontal grid lines.

Plate 1. Grid lines in manuscript Or.8210/S.230

Even though there is usually an even number of characters per line, these are not aligned horizontally, as they vary in size and spacing according to the rhythm of the calligraphy. For this very reason, there are no horizontal grid lines except for the two main ones which enclose the text from the top and bottom. In most cases the grid lines are very faint and appear to our modern eye as if drawn with a pencil. In reality, they are written with a thin brush using diluted ink. This way, they do not dominate the layout but remain in the background, at times staying almost invisible. This suggests that they were not strictly speaking part of the design but rather a trace of the process of creating the sutra. In other words, their functionality lasted only while the text was being written and after that they lost their use. Having said that, there are cases where the grid lines are very strong and were obviously intended to remain highly visible. For example, in Or.8212/480 in Plate 2, an early fragment from Loulan (3rd-4th century?), the lines are extremely well pronounced and go well beyond seving as guidelines for the calligrapher. They were certainly intended to be part of the layout.

Plate 2. Manuscript Or.8212.480 from Loulan

An even more interesting case is Pelliot chinois 4500 (see Plate 3), a silk manuscript with an apocryphal sutra where the characters are embroidered onto the material. Similar to sutras written on paper, the text is guided by vertical and horizontal grid lines, regardless of the fact that the artisan embroidering the characters probably did not need such devices to keep the characters straight. Nevertheless, as far as I can see from the online photographs of the verso of the scroll, the stitchings were done over brush-written characters and it is possible that the grid lines were used in the process of writing the text with a brush, before having those embroidered. This scenario, however, does not explain why the lines had to be so prominent. All in all, there are clearly cases when the grid lines do not serve an immediate role but are created or preserved to be part of the layout design. This is also corroborated by their presence in many stone inscriptions where they would have served no functional purpose whatsoever.

Plate 3. Embroidered silk manuscript Pelliot chinois 4500

National Palace Museum – Splendid Masterpieces

From: Asian Art Blog, January 16, 2012

The National Palace Museum in Taipei has put some of their finest collection pieces online. Interesting not only for researchers, some calligraphy scrolls including Wang Xizhi or Huai Su from Tang Dynasty are completely reproduced online. This is the first time in history, that you can take a full look on imperial collection srolls with your computer!



 Go to the website: Splendid Masterpieces

From the Introduction to the online exhibition:

  The overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911 set the stage for the formal establishment of the Republic of China in the following year. Based on the principles of democracy, the possessions acquired by the imperial family were returned to the public to be shared by all. In the first year of the Republic, 1912, the Museum of History was established at the Directorate of Education. Two years later, objects at the temporary palaces in Shengjing and Jehol in Liaoning were gathered to form the Institute for Exhibiting Antiquities. And after the abdicated emperor family left the palace in 1924, an inventory of the collection in the Forbidden City was finally conducted. In the following year on October 10, National Day, the Palace Museum was founded and opened to the public for viewing. What followed was the development of its functions as a public museum devoted to the exhibition, research, collection, education, and promotion of its holdings. To avoid the flames of war, however, the cream of the collection several times was crated and transported to safety. In 1965, the Central Museum (with its objects mostly from the Institute for Exhibiting Antiquities) and the Museum of History along with the Palace Museum (with their holdings for the most part from the Forbidden City) were brought together to form the National Palace Museum in the Taipei suburb of Waishuangxi, creating a treasury and bastion of Chinese art and culture famous the world over. As such, the collection of the National Palace Museum principally derives from the Qing dynasty court. The holdings inherited from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasty courts can be summed up as a "national treasure."In other words, these objects form a national treasury passed down through the ages. Along with new acquisitions in the form of donations and purchases since the founding of the Republic, the National Palace Museum now features a staggering collection of more than 680,000 objects. In addition to treasures of antiquities, painting and calligraphy, and rare books spanning 8,000 years of Chinese culture, the collection also features the essence of arts and crafts supervised by the Qing court along with its wealth of archival materials. Since the Museum opened in Taipei, comprehensive and special permanent exhibitions have been complemented by publications, lectures, and symposia, providing audiences with not only a feast for the eyes but also first-hand historical materials for research, thereby continuously promoting the collection as a source for creativity in modern life. Over the past century, archaeological discoveries have revealed the pluralistic face of ancient Chinese civilization. Around the world, various public and private collections along with historical materials continue to be made available to all, with the holdings of the National Palace Museum becoming increasingly cherished for its value. For example, in a tradition that emphasizes rites and antiquity, the Museum's collection of a long segmented jade cong tube from the Liangzhu Culture and a meticulously carved jade gui tablet of the Longshan Culture, both from the Neolithic Age, testify to the spiritual content and technical achievements of remote antiquity. Although it was a period the Qing emperors could not fully understand, their inscriptions on these works still clearly echo with an artistic aesthetic that has spanned time and space. Another example is collectanea of the Ming and Qing dynasties that required enormous expenditures of national resources and labor to compile, including the Yongle Encyclopedia, Tibetan Dragon Sutra, and Complete Library of the Four Treasuries. Transcribing and collating to preserve the classics can be called an important feat in the history of humanity as well. As for the history of painting and calligraphy, the masterpieces of such groundbreaking artists as Wang Xizhi, Sun Guoting, Yan Zhenqing, Fan Kuan, Guo Xi, and Li Tang reveal a masterful wielding of brush and ink. Illuminating the hills and valleys of the mind, they continued the joint artistic tradition within Chinese culture. And emperors over the dynasties also supervised craftsmen, resulting in the production of various renowned works, such as official porcelains of the Song dynasty; lacquerware of the Yongle period and doucai porcelains of the Chenghua era in the Ming dynasty; and falangcai enamelware and Songhua inkstones of the Qing court. All of these brought out the finest achievements in arts and crafts at the time they were produced. And exquisite carvings, such as the jadeite cabbage and olive-pit boat in the Museum collection, continue to win the admiration of and become part of the eternal collective memory of visitors. The history of the National Palace Museum is intricately related to that of the Republic of China. On this occasion of the country's centennial celebrations, the Museum has gathered and presented a special selection of a hundred objects noted for their historic significance, importance, rarity, artistry, and popularity. In doing so, they illustrate a continuous heritage of art and culture as well as their multiple facets, also offering by extension blessings for the continued prosperity and good fortune of the nation.

River of Wisdom

River of Wisdom – Animated Version of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival

27 November, 2010 by Roland Lim in his blog " The World according to Roland"

 In the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the “Animated Version of the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival” created by modern multimedia technology earns its reputation as the star exhibit in the China Pavilion. Projected on a giant screen of more than 120 metres long and 6 metres high, the picture shows its details with animation including moving people, running water, various kinds of goods being displayed for sale, boat trackers shouting on the river and boats swinging their ways forward. A vivid, artificial river meanders through the lower part of the giant picture, giving visitors a stunning experience and an illusion that they are staying in Bianjing, the capital of Northern Song Dynasty nine hundred years ago. This giant picture is called “River of Wisdom” because it depicts many cultural aspects demonstrating the wisdom of Chinese in ancient times. The animated version of the picture is 30 times of its original scroll. Elaborate computer animation gives life to characters and objects in the painting. An integrated image is formed by several high resolution projectors using sophisticated computer geometric transformation and correction technology. The entire features of the original painting including all its streets, boats and buildings are retained in the animation. The scene is portrayed in day to night cycles lasting for four minutes with dramatic interplay of light and colour. It is indeed a masterpiece that blends state-of-the-art animation technology with traditional Chinese culture. Additional elements of history, culture, art and education are incorporated in the exhibition. These include the introduction of the significance of the “Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival” in the Chinese culture and art, and the depiction of the production idea and process of its animated version. The exhibition facilitates visitors to learn more about the urban outlook, people’s daily life and the achievements in science and technology in Song Dynasty.
 I was lucky to have obtained a ticket to see River of Wisdom when it was temporarily moved to the AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong for short term exhibition after the Shanghai World Expo finished. The scale of the display simply huge and one needs to be there in person to a a perspective of how large it is. I have made a short video with Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I hope you will enjoy it.

A Riverside Scene At Qingming Festival

A Riverside Scene At Qingming Festival - 清明上河图
by Qiu Ying of the Ming Dynasty

Silk Scroll Colors Filled in Sketches Hand Scroll Longtitudinal 31 cm Horizontal 1346 cm 
Author / Editor: （明）仇英 绘 (Ming-Dynastie) Jiu Ying (Künstler)
ISBN: 978-7-80663-624-4, 9787806636244
Cathay Book Shop - 中国书店
Language: bilingual Chinese-English
2009.01



Qiu Ying, was born in Zhengde’s year or late Hongzhi’s year of the Ming Dynasty, and died in the 31st year of Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1552). His alternative name was Shizhou and he styled himself as Shifu or Shifu. He was of a native of Taicang, Jiangsu province, and later moved to Wuxian County of Jiangsu province (Suzhou today). Qiu Ying was neither a descendant of an eminent family nor a son of a scholarly family. His childhood was not one cultivated among celebrities or gentlemen, and he had no experience of a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations. He was obliged to discontinue his studies as a boy and once practiced as lacquer man. As far as his lot and experience were concerned, it seemed that Qiu Ying was not qualified to be ranked among the “Four Famous Artists of Ming Dynasty” together with Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin; however, after we had a review of the works he left, we would feeld that he was fully deserved such an honor. Qiu Ying’s A Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is an imitation of A Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan of the Northern Song Dynasty. Zhang Zeduan’s A Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is an immortal masterpiece, an art treasure in China’s art history. It is a painting reflecting the prosperity and lively scenes at the Qingming Festival in Bianliang (present-day Kaifeng in Henan Province), the capital city of the Northern Song Dynasty. Broad in scale and well composed, this painting depicts more than 550 people, more than 60 deomestic animals of various kinds, more than 20 wood boats, as well as many kinds of houses and buildings, carts and sedan chairs and etc. The rich content in this painting is rare in the paintings from the previous dynasties. However, what is hard to come by and particularly valuable is that every figure, scene and detail are reasonably arranged and well composed, complicated and diverse but not in disorder. Undoubtedly all the later imitators will find it a difficult and huge project to imitate it. Qiu Ying’s A Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival, comparing with Zhang Zeduan’s, is actually a work of his own creation, for it has assumed considerably great variations in structure, circumstances and artistic features, in other words, it has made significant changes and improvements to Zhang Zeduan’s A Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival. As described in the painting, Suzhou, named Wu in ancient times, was the capital of Wu Kingdom early in the Spring and Autumn Period. The painter begins the painting from the scene of the suburban area of Suzhou along the waterway, and then paints through Hong Bridge to the city access and finally the western suburban area. He was finished at a scene of overwater pavilions. The whole painting is 9.8 meters long, two times longer than the one painted by Zhang Zeduan, and the painting has the customs, features and human activities in Suzhou city and the South of Ming Dynasty more than 400 years ago loom large in front of the audience. There are mountains, cities, streets, bridges, rivers, piers, passersby, shops, boats, drama platforms, parade grounds, and also there are scenes such as wedding, banquet, gathering, farmland working, performance, dealing, fishing, fortune-telling and the like. This is true reappearance of Suzhou as the economic and cultural center of the Southeast China. The painter makes fully use of the characteristics of the dispersedly points perspective of the Chinese painting, utilizing the organic combination of highlighted scenery to deduce a lively drama without sound. The center of the volume is the prosperous street spots of Suzhou, the painter starts to describe the quiet village, which is similar in essence to the structure of A Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festivalby Zhang Zeduan of Northern Song Dynasty. The whole volume is naturally sectioned by mountains, river, ramparts and bridges. Its structure not only reflects the real physical geography and environment of Suzhou, but also blends the innovative conception of the painter. Furthermore, the painter has unique ideas for design of scenes and treatment of the details. 2,2000 people described in the picutre, including men and women, the old and the young, the four callings. You can tell the identity of each one of them by their action, expression, clothes and tools with no duplication. The simple and strong clothes lines reflects the action of figures through the density and turns of the lines, and are dotted with different colors in accordance with the identity, age and sex of figures. The locations of the buildings are skilfully arranged. There are many kinds of buildings, such as official departments, shops, firms, platforms and towers. The painter uses the combination of far and near, large and small, virtual and facture expression techniques, which clearly reflects the style and features of the city at that moment and on basis of which the painter can easily arrange certain scenes with certain kinds of people. The ramparts are reflected by realism techniques with clear description of their sunny-side and shaded-side, front and back transitions. … Qiu Ying, poorly-born but talented representative of Chinese ancient professional painters, creates A Riverside Scene at the Qingming Festival which truly reflects the customs, features and human activities of Suzhou four hundred years ago, creates varieties of artistic images and shows omnipotent realism techniques. It is not only a gigantic masterpiece of genre painting marking the transition of Chinese painting history, but also a historic painting with precious value on academic research. Judging from the style reflected by the painting, it is created when Qiu Ying was about more than 40 years old, living as a guest in the residence of Xiang Yuanbian.

Qingming Shang He Tu

Qingming Shang He Tu - Scenes along the River during the Qingming Festival (清明上河图，英文版) 
Zhang Zeduan 张择端 
ISBN: 978-1-60220-003-6 
Better Link Press, Shanghai Press and Publishing Development Company (上海新闻出版发展公司) 
English 
Date of Publication: 2008.07 

This painting is the best genre painting in the history of Chinese painting. Scenes along the River during the Qingming Festival depicts the hustle and bustle of town life in what is today’s Kaifeng, then known as Bianjing, the capital of Northern Song Dynasty. This twelfth century painting brings to life the town and the natural scenery along the banks of the Bian River on the day of the Qingming Festival. It is a masterpiece of realism, recording the pulses of a thriving historical town and showing extraordinary details of the bridge, the carriage, the costumes, and the activities of various walks of life. Because of its detailed, vivid, and all-inclusive description, the painting has served as an extremely important source of visual material for the study of Chinese urban life in the twelfth century. It was painted by Zhang Zeduan, nicknamed Zhengdao, a native of Dongwu in what is today’s Zhucheng, Shandong Province. He was a court painter during the reign of Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty. The original paintings are presently preserved in The Palace Museum in Beijing.

Fans brave long queue for Chinese masterpiece

To watch the video, click HERE

 To mark the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations between China and Japan, Tokyo National Museum is holding a special exhibition of Chinese masterpieces from January 2nd to February 19th, including the world renowned scroll "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" from the Palace Museum in Beijing. The magnificent exhibition consists of a selection of 200 of China’s most prominent masterpieces, taken from the Beijing Palace Museum’s collection of more than 1.8 million artifacts. For the majority of the works, including China’s famous Qingming scroll, this is the first time they have travelled abroad for a chance to astound overseas audiences.

Unlike the rest of the collection, which will remain open to audiences until February 19th, the Qingming scroll is only to be displayed until January 24th. Taking advantage of this rare opportunity, many people started to line up early in the morning in order to get a close look at the legendary masterpiece. Reporter: “Standing in front of Tokyo National Museum, we found a sign saying the time we have to wait for before get to see the real Qingming scroll. Now it says 90 minutes. According to the staff of Tokyo National Museum, the average number of the visitors per day is around 1300.” 90 minutes was not even the worst of it. Many visitors waited as long as 3 hours, and some unfortunate souls missed out altogether. One Japanese visitor said: "I really want to see the Qingming scroll for myself, but today was not my day. I’ll come back another time and queue earlier." The Qingming scroll is no doubt the star of the exhibition. This panoramic handscroll, stretched out full-length under a glass case, presents foreign viewers with the scene of a Qingming Festival back in the 12th century. It captures the daily lives of Chinese people during the Song period, at the then capital Bianjing, today’s Kaifeng. Most visitors came here to see for themselves why the Qingming scroll is considered to be the most renowned work among all Chinese paintings. It seems they’ve found the answer. One Japanese visitor said: "It’s really a golden opportunity to see the real Qingming scroll in person. I was fascinated to learn how Chinese people lived back in the Song dynasty from all the exquisite detail in the painting. It was just astonishing." One Swedish visitor said: "I think it’s amazing. The level of skill, craftsmanship was just amazing." One Japanese visitor said: "I don’t think you can find a painting like this in Japan. It’s a real masterpiece." The Qingming scroll and other selected masterpieces represent an important part of Chinese culture. Many of the visitors at the exhibition expressed added interest in learning about Chinese culture and history. Many hope the exhibition would help introduce more Chinese masterpieces to Japan in the future. Chinese Ambassador to Japan Cheng Yonghua said: "The exhibition is a great start to celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations between China and Japan. It is a really significant exhibition. " As one Japanese visitor put it, cultural exchanges such as this can continue to develop a deep friendship between Japan and China for generations to come.

Source: CNTV

Chinese treasures attract 40,000 Tokyo visitors

TOKYO - A special exhibition highlighted by the world-renowned Chinese painting "Life along the Bian River at the Qingming Festival," had attracted about 40,000 visitors after it was opened to the public in the Tokyo National Museum on January 2, organizers said Monday. Outside the gate of the museum, a board reading that it takes an 80-minute wait in line before one is able to view the famous hand scroll is put up conspicuously. The officials of the museum told Xinhua crowd disorder had happened during the exhibition, due to the popularity of the treasured painting from the Song Dynasty some 1,000 years ago, The work is one of a selection of 200 exhibits in the event, which is part of the efforts to mark the 40th anniversary of the normalization of China-Japan relations this year. Those masterpieces include calligraphic works and paintings not yet shown outside the Palace Museum by artists in the Song and Yuan dynasties, and the court dress and other accessories used in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The event will last until February 19 at the Heiseikan Special Exhibition Galleries of the museum, but the famous painting will be wrapped up on January 24.

First-Class Cultural Heritage　Life along the Bian River at the Qingming Festival (detail) By Zhang Zeduan, Northern Song dynasty, 12th century, Collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, China [On display from Monday, January 2 to Tuesday, January 24, 2012]

Among the Song- and Yuan-dynasty calligraphic works and paintings admired by all fans of Chinese art, Life along the Bian River at the Qingming Festival (Northern Song dynasty, 12th century) is an especially renowned masterpiece. This hand scroll, painted by Zhang Zeduan and measuring over 5 meters long, vividly depicts in detail festivities in the Northern Song-dynasty capital, Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng). The fame of this work as one of the highest points of Chinese art has spread far and wide. However, it is rarely exhibited, even at the Palace Museum in Beijing, and it has only been shown outside of the museum at the Shanghai Museum, the Liaoning Provincial Museum and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. At all these places it was displayed for a limited period of time and was so popular that the exhibition venues, to which art fans flocked from around the world, recorded waiting times of several hours. For the first time, China’s “national treasure of national treasures” is crossing the sea to go on display in Tokyo.

For more information, click on the site of the Tokyo National Museum

Classical Paintings of Ancient China

Classical Paintings of Ancient China


Opened Dec 29, 2011; On Regular Display 
National Museum of China, Beijing 
Venue: Gallery S12

The classical painting collection at the National Museum of China covers a wide range of subjects and styles. Limited by the original exhibition space, most of them have not been shown to the public until now. It is the first time since the re-opening of the museum that the exhibition "Classical Painting of Ancient China" is on display, featuring two of the most celebrated pieces in the collection: Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour and Strange Tales of Liaozhai. Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour is composed of 12 scrolls, which 4 of them are on display in this exhibition. Executed by royal court painter Xu Yang during the Qing dynasty, the scrolls illustrate the scenes when Qianlong Emperor visited the south of China to inspect the water systems, social conditions and military preparations. These scrolls serve as a visual record that captures the social conditions and the landscapes during "the Golden Age of Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors." Strange Tales of Liaozhai is based on the classical Chinese tales written by Pu Songling. It is composed of wooden plates and colorful images on silk scroll. The techniques employed are refined and vivid, and the colors are rich and bright. The themes of the tales combine folk attractiveness with literary significance.

Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll 1, “Departure from the Capital”

Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll 3, “Crossing the Yellow River”

Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll 8, “Sojourn at Hangzhou”

Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll 10, “Military Parade at Jiangning”

           Strange Tales of Liaozhai, “Fengxian”

         Strange Tales of Liaozhai, “Hongyu”

          Strange Tales of Liaozhai, “Bai Qiulian”

           Strange Tales of Liaozhai, “Princess of the West Lake”

         Strange Tales of Liaozhai, “Chang’e”

The Song Dynasty as Living Art

Singapore Expo Hall 7 Dec 2011- 6 Feb 2012


International premiere of the animated painting - 清明上河图 - The Song Dynasty as Living Art. More info about the exhibition at www.amovingmasterpiece.com and read description of the painting herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Along_the_River_During_the_Qingming_Festival

A digital panoramic animated moving masterpiece measuring 128 metres long and 6.5 metres high - 1068 moving and talking characters on the countryside into the city as days turn into night.


Along the River During the Qingming Festival (simplified Chinese: 清明上河图; traditional Chinese: 清明上河圖; pinyin: Qīngmíng Shànghé Tú) is a panoramic painting by Song Dynasty artist Zhang Zeduan (1085--1145). It captures the daily life of people from the Song period at the capital, Bianjing, today's Kaifeng. The theme celebrates the festive spirit and worldly commotion at the Qingming Festival, rather than the holiday's ceremonial aspects, such as tomb sweeping and prayers. The entire piece was painted in hand scroll format and the content reveals the lifestyle of all levels of the society from rich to poor as well as different economic activities in rural areas and the city. It offers glimpses of period clothing and architecture. As an artistic creation, the piece has been revered and court artists of subsequent dynasties have made several re-interpretive replicas. The painting is also known for its geometrically accurate images of variety natural elements and architectures, boats and bridges, market place and stores, people and scenery. It is often considered to be the most renowned work among all Chinese paintings, and it has been called "China's Mona Lisa."

One Hundred Geese attributed to Ma Fen

In this 15 foot long handscroll attributed to Ma Fen, the viewer can enjoy 100 geese, painted in shades of gray and black ink, moving through a misty marsh.

The Night Banquet: A Chinese Scroll Through Time

The Night Banquet: A Chinese Scroll Through Time
By De-nin Deanne Lee

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: University of Washington Press (25 Mar 2011)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0295990724

The tenth-century Chinese handscroll The Night Banquet of Han Xizai (attributed to tenth-century artist Gu Hongzheng), long famous for its depiction of a decadent party hosted by a government official, is used by De-nin Lee to explore how art objects are created and the many sociopolitical eras and individual hands through which they pass. By the tenth or eleventh century, and in earnest by the thirteenth, viewers of Chinese paintings lodged their responses to a work of art directly on the object itself, in the form of seals, inscriptions and colophons. The scrawls and markings may amount to distractions for the seasoned admirer of European easel painting, but Lee explains that a handscroll painting without its complement of textual accretions loses its very history. Through her deft detective work, we watch the Night Banquet handscroll-much like the enigmatic seventeenth-century Cremonese instrument in Francois Girard's film The Red Violin-travel through the centuries from owner to owner and viewer to viewer, influencing and being influenced by the people who contemplate it and add their thoughts, signatures and seals to its borders. Treating the scroll as a co-creation of painter and viewers, Lee tells a fascinating story of cultural practices surrounding Chinese paintings. In effect, her book addresses a question central to art history: What is the role of art in a society? De-nin Lee is assistant professor of art and Asian studies at Bowdoin College in Maine.

Review
"A tour-de-force of historical scholarship, The Night Banquet is an engaging narrative that at times reads like a detective novel. Lee investigates every individual who saw, wrote on, or commented about the scroll and she leads the reader on an enticing journey of discovery that provides both an overview of Chinese history and an in-depth reading of this extraordinary work of art."-Ankeney Weitz, Colby College "Lee has been immensely successful in her quest to uncover the history and changing significance of the Han Xizai scroll, detailing what a spectrum of career officials, connoisseurs, collectors and emperors had to say about it-sometimes disapproving of the subject matter as licentious and immoral, sometimes considering it a vehicle for comment on current political situations. A masterful study, rooted in extensive original research, rich in detail and interpretation, The Night Banquet is a major contribution to the study of Chinese painting and to Chinese culture in general."-Ellen Johnston Laing, University of Michigan

The Prosperous Cities: A Selection of Paintings from the Liaoning Provincial Museum

The Prosperous Cities: This is about an exhibition in 2009 but the scrolls are so beautiful!!

A Selection of Paintings from the Liaoning Provincial Museum
2009.09.25 - 11.22
Hong Kong Museum of Art
Special Exhibition Gallery (1), 2/F

Jointly presented by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and
the Liaoning Provincial Museum
Jointly organised by the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Liaoning Provincial Museum

A Celebration Programme of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the PRC

This exhibition features 15 paintings from the Ming (13681644) and Qing (16441911) dynasties, on the unique theme of prosperous cities, from the collection of the Liaoning Provincial Museum. Most of the exhibits, once prized possessions of the Qing emperor Qianlong, are representative works in the history of painting. Offering an insight into China's urban wealth during the Ming and Qing periods, they include significant paintings such as Along the River during the Qingming Festival by Qiu Ying (ca.1494ca.1552) of the Ming dynasty, Ten Views of West Lake by Wang Yuanqi (16421715) and Prosperous Suzhou by Xu Yang (1712ca. 1777) of the Qing dynasty.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the handscroll by Xu Yang, a Qing court painter during the reign of Qianlong. Completed in 1759 during Qianlong's second Southern Inspection Tour, the scroll painting provides a panoramic but extraordinarily detailed view of 18th century Suzhou. In it, Xu painstakingly depicts people from all walks of life from fishermen, woodcutters and tillers to merchants, literati and civil officers as well as Suzhou's fascinating scenery, in which many prosperous aspects of the city during the High Qing era are emphasised.

A Pure and Remote View/ Visualizing Early Chinese Landscape by James Cahill

James Cahill, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Art at UC Berkeley and author of Pictures for Use and Pleasure: Vernacular Painting in High Qing China, has spent the last two years working on a comprehensive historical account of early Chinese landscape painting, a topic that has been somewhat neglected in the field of Art History. The series, titled A Pure and Remote View: Visualizing Early Chinese Landscape Painting, was sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies (IEAS) and produced by Chatterbox Films.

Hosted online by IEAS and available on Youtube, the seven-part series is composed of short introductions by Cahill and over 2,200 detailed high-resolution images of selected Chinese paintings and works of pictorial art from the early period up to the end of the Song dynasty in the late thirteenth century. You can also find the series, as well as a repository of mostly unpublished, or hard-to-find writings on James Cahill’s website.

Untill now, 12 lectures have been published with more to follow:


I begin by introducing my three major teachers, and go on to outline the background of the series: early attempts at histories of Chinese painting, photographing and cataloguing projects carried out in the 1960s-70s, changing ideas about how art history should be constructed and written. I introduce Ernst Gombrich as a model for the kind of art-historical narrative I will attempt, but also emphasize the strong tradition of critical and historical writing in China that underlies my account. This first lecture ends with a brief introduction to early pictorial art in China: Neolithic painted pots, hunting-style bronzes, the earliest paintings on silk from Changsha.


This lecture considers the growth of pictorial art during the Han dynasty (208 BCE to AD 220), beginning with paintings on silk (including the famous 'flying garment") from the tombs at Changsha, continuing with pictures on tomb objects (mingqi) and lacquer designs, and ending with the remarkable relief pictures on tomb tiles found in Sichuan. Early renderings of space and the beginnings of expressive rushwork are revealed in visual analyses of all these.


This third lecture, more than two hours long, treats the pictorial art of the variously-named period between the Han and Tang dynasties, a period of political division and warfare during which relative peace in the Yangzi Delta region around Nanjing permitted the emergence there of major artists and a flourishing tradition of picturemaking. Detailed looking at scroll paintings ascribed to one artist, GuKaizhi, introduces issues of dating and the faithfulness of copies after a lost original; brief discussions of two early essays open a continuing consideration of the rich Chinese critical and theoretical literature on painting.


This lecture is about figure painting of the Tang dynasty (AD 610-907). Tomb paintings of the early Tang, works associated with the legendary figure master Wu Daozi, reliable copies after palace-lady pictures by Zhou Fang and others together with one original, make up a detailed exploration of this greatest age of figure painting in China.


Landscape painting in the Tang dynasty takes two directions: a detailed and colorful style, and the beginnings of an ink-monochrome style. Examples of both in surviving copies and fragments, along with a tomb wall painting. a
rubbing from a stone engraving, and the background landscape from a Buddhist image are shown and discussed in this lecture.


Another period of political disunity bridging the brief gap (AD 907-960) between two long-lasting dynasties, the Tang and the Song, the Five Dynasties was nonetheless an age of great innovation in landscape and other painting. This lecture uses reliable works of the period and close copies for visual exploration of striking pictorial images that draw the viewer's eye into their intricate spatial systems.


In this same period, five great masters of landscape--Jing Hao and Guan Tong, Dong Yuan and Juran, Li Cheng--brought to this art a new profundity of conception and diversity of styles. Although no surviving work can be firmly accepted as by any one of them, major paintings of high quality and importance are attributed to them, and are given close visual analysis in this lecture, which also introduces new theories and concepts of how landscape imagery can carry profound human meaning.


A time of greatest achievement in the development of landscape painting in China, the early Northern Song period saw the emergence of a fully formed, monumental landscape art as achieved by three towering masters, Yan Wengui, Fan Kuan, and Xu Daoning, all represented by extant genuine works. These are explored in detail, along with paintings by some of their followers
and imitators.


This lecture is devoted to the late Northern Song master Guo Xi, the last of the great masters of monumental landscape, beginning with his essay on painting landscape, continuing with a prolonged exploration of his masterwork Early Spring, and ending with a consideration of other paintings ascribed to him.


After discussions of some large theoretical and methodological issues, this lecture presents paintings by two artists who were members of the Song imperial family, Zhao Lingrang by birth and Wang Shen through marriage. The strengths and limitations of their works are brought out in a discussion of the implications of amateurism in painting.


The beginnings and early stages of the scholar-amateur movement in painting, known first as shidafu hua and later as wenren hua, are presented through works by or attributed to the early literati masters, notably Su Shi or Su Dongpo, Mi Fu, and Li Gonglin. An especially fine painting from the next generation, the Red Cliff handscroll by Qiao Zhongchang, is given a longer, detailed treatment.

The ancient Art of understanding and appreciating Chinese Scroll Paintings.

Maxwell Hearn, the new head of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, demonstrates the ancient art of understanding and appreciating Chinese scroll paintings.

24 meter long Chinese handscroll sold at auction for € 22 mln

A giant 18th-century Chinese silk scroll painting of a military troop review has been sold at auction for more than euro22 million ($30.8 million), the highest auction price for a Chinese work in France.
The work, found in a Paris attic and sold in Toulouse by auctioneer Marc Labarbe, is one of a series of four works of 17th-century maneuvers that mobilized some 20,000 men.
A Hong Kong collector, who asked to remain anonymous, made the winning bid Saturday of euro22,057,000 after a ferocious bidding war with seven others.
The 24-meter-long (78.7 feet) horizontal scroll was painted around 1748 under Emperor Qianlong.
One of the four scrolls is in the Palace Museum of Beijing, and another was auctioned off in 2008 at Sotheby's in Hong Kong — for $67.86 million.

Chinese Handscrolls

Chinese Handscrolls are among the most beautiful items of art, both for their finesse and detail and for their size and abundance of information about life and customs in general at the time that they were made.
At the other hand they are quite unknown to the general public.
This has to do with the fact that they are in a way quite rare and seldom available to the general public for viewing.

In 2006 in Musee Guimet in Paris there was a brilliant exhibition, called The Very Rich Hours of the Court of China / Masterpieces of Qing Imperial Painting .
At this exhibition some of the masterpieces of Chinese Handscrolls were assembled for viewing by the general public.

On the web, there are a few sites dedicated to the subject of Chinese Handscrolls (see further on this weblog).
A very good introduction to the phenomenom of the Chinese Handscrolls however, one can find at the site of the Metropolotan Museum of Art in New York .
The main story from this site by Dawn Delbanco from the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University you will find reproduced below:




Story by Dawn Delbanco of the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
A significant difference between Eastern and Western painting lies in the format. Unlike Western paintings, which are hung on walls and continuously visible to the eye, most Chinese paintings are not meant to be on constant view but are brought out to be seen only from time to time. This occasional viewing has everything to do with format.
A predominant format of Chinese painting is the handscroll, a continuous roll of paper or silk of varying length on which an image has been painted, and which, when not being viewed, remains rolled up. Ceremony and anticipation underlie the experience of looking at a handscroll. When in storage, the painting itself is several layers removed from immediate view, and the value of a scroll is reflected in part by its packaging. Scrolls are generally kept in individual wooden boxes that bear an identifying label. Removing the lid, the viewer may find the scroll wrapped in a piece of silk, and, unwrapping the silk, encounters the handscroll bound with a silken cord that is held in place with a jade or ivory toggle. After undoing the cord, one begins the careful process of unrolling the scroll from right to left, pausing to admire and study it, shoulder-width section by section, rerolling a section before proceeding to the next one.

The experience of seeing a scroll for the first time is like a revelation. As one unrolls the scroll, one has no idea what is coming next: each section presents a new surprise. Looking at a handscroll that one has seen before is like visiting an old friend whom one has not seen for a while. One remembers the general appearance, the general outlines, of the image, but not the details. In unrolling the scroll, one greets a remembered image with pleasure, but it is a pleasure that is enhanced at each viewing by the discovery of details that one has either forgotten or never noticed before.

Looking at a handscroll is an intimate experience. Its size and format preclude a large audience, which usually is limited to one or two. Unlike the viewer of Western painting, who maintains a certain distance from the image, the viewer of a handscroll has direct physical contact with the object, rolling and unrolling the scroll at his/her own desired pace, lingering over some passages, moving quickly through others.

The format of a handscroll allows for the depiction of a continuous narrative or journey: the viewing of a handscroll is a progression through time and space—both the narrative time and space of the image, but also the literal time and distance it takes to experience the entire painting. As the scroll unfurls, so the narrative or journey progresses. In this way, looking at a handscroll is like reading a book: just as one turns from page to page, not knowing what to expect, one proceeds from section to section; in both painting and book, there is a beginning and an end.

Indeed, this resemblance is not incidental. The handscroll format—as well as other Chinese painting formats—displays an intimacy between word and image. Many handscrolls contain inscriptions preceding or following the image: poems composed by the painter or others that enhance the meaning of the image, or a few written lines that convey the circumstances of its creation. Many handscrolls also contain colophons, or commentary written onto additional sheets of paper or silk that follows the image itself. These may be comments written by friends of the artist or the collector; they may have been written by viewers from later generations. The colophons may comment on the quality of the painting, express the rhapsody (rarely the disenchantment) of the viewer, give a biographical sketch of the artist, place the painting within an art-historical context, or engage with the texts of earlier colophons. And as a final way of making their presence known, the painter, the collectors, the one-time viewers often "sign" the image or colophons with personal seals bearing their names, these red marks of varying size conveying pride of authorship or ownership.

Thus the handscroll is both painted image and documentary history; past and present are in continuous dialogue. Looking at a scroll with colophons and inscriptions, a viewer sees not only a pictorial representation but witnesses the history of the painting as it is passed down from generation to generation.

Dawn Delbanco
Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University

Citation for this page

Delbanco, Dawn. "Chinese Handscrolls". In Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chhs/hd_chhs.htm (April 2008)


Suggested Further Reading(s) Find these publications in a library

Cahill, James. "Approaches to Chinese Painting." In Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, by Richard M. Barnhart et al., pp. 5–12. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Gulik, R. H. van. Chinese Pictorial Art as Viewed by the Connoisseur. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1958.
Hearn, Maxwell K. How to Read Chinese Paintings. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.



More Information on www.metmuseum.org