The origin of painting biography

As early as 1930s, there were Feng Zikai's The True Story of Ah Q, Cheng Shifa's cartoon Kong Yiji and Zhang Leping's Biography of Little Mi. The appearance of comic books paved the way for later biographies. The earliest painting biography can be traced back to 1998, a new edition of "Painting Biography of Mustard Garden" published by People's Fine Arts Publishing House. This picture biography is compiled from an art work of Mustard Garden, and introduces the basic techniques of Chinese painting in Qing Dynasty.

China's earliest biographies of figure painting can be traced back to Master Hongyi published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in 2000, Confucius published by Huayi Publishing House in 20001year, The Founding Fathers published by Central Literature Publishing House in 20001year and Lu Xun published by Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House in 20001year.

By the end of 2003, the publication of pictorial biographies suddenly warmed up, which can be said to be the beginning of the publication of "Century China Pictorial Series" by Writers Publishing House. In a short period of one year, The Portrait of Song Meiling, the first book in this series, has been printed for 20 consecutive editions, and there are many editions such as American edition, Japanese edition, Taiwan Province edition, Hongkong edition and Korean edition. Then, Shi Yonggang, the author of the series, compiled the second book, The Picture Biography of Teresa Teng, which was published in February 2004. It is still very popular, and created a grand scene for its distribution in Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province and Hongkong. This series of books triggered the transfer of painting fever in China, and for a time, various illustrated books emerged one after another.