The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is 525cm long and 25.5cm wide, including 684 figures, 96 livestock, 122 houses, 8 sedan chairs, 25 boats and 124 trees. The Northern Song Dynasty genre painting Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival. A masterpiece handed down from generation to generation, a first-class national treasure. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is one of the most famous works in China's painting history. It is not only of superb artistic level, but also has many interesting stories circulating around it.
Author Zhang Zeduan, whose name is Zhengdao, was born in Wu Dong (now Zhucheng, Shandong Province). Song Huizong is a court painter. When I was a teenager, I went to study in the capital city of Bianliang (now Kaifeng, Henan). After that, I learned painting, especially painting boats and cars, painting urban bridges, painting Guo Jing, and getting married. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival is Zhang Zeduan's masterpiece, which was collected by Xuanhe Neifu in the Northern Song Dynasty. It is a light-colored silk book with a height of 24.8 cm and a length of 528.7 cm. The original is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival records the architecture and people's livelihood in the suburbs of Bianjing (now Kaifeng), the capital of Hui Zong era, and on both sides of Bianhe River in the city with exquisite brushwork. This painting depicts the bustling scene and natural scenery on both sides of Bianliang and Bianhe, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty, during the Qingming period. In the form of a long scroll, the work uses the composition method of scattered perspective to bring complicated scenery into a unified and changeable picture. There are more than 500 people in the painting, with different clothes and expressions, interspersed with various activities, paying attention to drama, dense composition, changing rhythm and rhythm, and ingenious brushwork. The whole picture is divided into three sections.
The first paragraph, Bianjing rural spring:
In the sparse forest mist, there are several huts, grass bridges, running water, old trees and boats. Two porters are driving five donkeys loaded with charcoal. They are going to town. A willow forest, with faint green branches, makes people feel that although it is chilly in spring, it is already spring back to the earth. In the sedan chair on the road, a woman sat in it. The top of the sedan chair is decorated with willows and flowers, followed by riders and bearers, returning from a walk in the suburbs of Beijing to sweep the grave. The description of the environment and characters points out the specific time and customs of Tomb-Sweeping Day, which opens the curtain for the whole painting.
In the middle section, the busy Bianhe Wharf:
Bianhe River is the hub of national grain transportation in the Northern Song Dynasty and the main road of commercial traffic. As can be seen from the picture, the population is dense and grain ships gather. Some people are resting in the teahouse, some are reading fortune-telling, and some are eating in the restaurant. There is also the Wangs paper horse shop, which sells sacrifices to sweep graves. Ships in the river come and go, end to end, either pulled by trackers or paddled by boatmen. Some are full of goods, going upstream, some are berthing and unloading nervously. Across the Bianhe River is a large wooden arch bridge with exquisite structure and beautiful shape. Such as flying rainbow, hence the name Hongqiao. There is a big ship waiting to cross the bridge. The boatman is supported by bamboo poles; Hook the bridge with a long pole; Lead the boat with hemp rope; Several people are busy lowering the mast so that the ship can pass. People in the neighboring ship are also pointing, as if shouting something. Both inside and outside the ship are busy crossing the bridge for this ship. People on the bridge are also sweating over the tense ferry scene. This is the well-known Hongqiao pier, which is full of traffic and bustling, and is really the intersection of land and water transportation.
In the second half, busy city streets:
Centered on the tall towers, there are rows of houses on both sides, including teahouses, restaurants, foot shops, meat shops, temples, public halls and so on. Silk, jewelry, spices, incense, paper horses and so on all have specialized businesses. In addition, there are medical clinics, car repair, fortune telling, shaving and plastic surgery, and all walks of life have everything. Large-scale shops are also tied up with "colorful buildings and happy doors", and banners are hung to attract business, and pedestrians in the market are jostling with each other. There are businessmen who do business and people who look at street scenes. There are monks walking around with baskets on their backs, tourists asking for directions from other places, street children who have heard of books, children of rich people who drink heavily in restaurants, disabled elderly people begging on the edge of cities, men, women and children, scholars, farmers, workers and businessmen, and so on. Means of transportation: sedan chair, camel, ox cart, rickshaw, flatbed, flatbed, all kinds of things. Vividly displayed in front of people.
In a total of more than five meters long picture scroll, * * * painted more than 550 people of various colors, including fifty or sixty cattle, horses, mules, donkeys and other livestock, more than 20 cars and bridges, and more than 20 ships of different sizes. Houses, bridges, towers, etc. They also have their own characteristics, reflecting the characteristics of architecture in the Song Dynasty. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan is a realistic genre painting depicting a corner of Bianjing in the Northern Song Dynasty, which has high historical value and artistic level.
In the history of painting, there are many paintings called The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, but there is only one original. After many scholars and experts' research on this subject, everyone's opinions are basically the same, and they all think that this painting of the Palace Museum in Beijing is an original of Zhang Zeduan in the Northern Song Dynasty. Other paintings of the same name were later copied or imitated by Zhang Zeduan.
Its artistic conception fully embodies the important features of China's traditional painting. Unlike western painting, it does not fix the viewpoint in a certain position, but adopts the methods of "dynamic perspective" or "scattered perspective" and "indefinite perspective" to deal with composition, which is more flexible. For example, the upper and lower Hongqiao, the bridge under the bridge, covers everything indoors and outdoors. The painter's ability and skill to observe and express objects are really amazing. It jumps out of the limitation of focus perspective, skillfully organizes the picture according to the requirements of the theme and the laws of art, and extends or shortens the distance from top to bottom and left to right according to the needs of the picture, which better expresses the artist's creative intention. In addition, it vividly shows its vast life picture and magnificent scenery of mountains and rivers from beginning to end, which fully embodies the artistic charm of working people in ancient China.