The unification of the Northern Song Dynasty eliminated the division and turmoil caused by feudal separatism, and for a period of time, the society was stable, the commercial handicraft industry developed rapidly, which promoted the urban civilization. Evonne, the eighth emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty, Hui Zong, went down in history because of his political incompetence and excessive fascination with art. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the Daikin Kingdom, which was founded by northern nomads, died in 1 127. Song Huizong and his son Zhao Heng were arrested and imprisoned, and died in humiliation a few years later. After the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty, the royal family crossed south with its capital in Lin 'an, which was called the Southern Song Dynasty in history (1 127- 1279). South China is rich in natural products. The northerners who moved south developed Jiangnan together with the southern natives, and the economy and culture continued to develop. Bianliang, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty (now Kaifeng City, Henan Province) and Lin 'an, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty (now Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province), enjoyed prosperous urban commerce. In addition to the gathering of nobles, there are a large number of businessmen, craftsmen and citizens, and urban cultural life is unprecedentedly active. Painting has entered the commercial ranks of handicraft industry, and painters sell their works as commodities in the market. Bianjing Suoguo Temple holds temple fairs five times a month, and there are many department stores, including stalls selling books and paintings. Lin 'an Night Market in the Southern Song Dynasty also sold fine painting fans and plum and bamboo fans. Restaurants in Bianjing and Lin 'an also beautify their shops and attract customers by hanging calligraphy and painting. When people hold festive banquets, they can rent screens, painting accounts, calligraphy and painting furnishings, etc. In order to meet the needs of the New Year Festival, seasonal paintings such as Door God and Zhong Kui were sold at the end of the year, which brought great prosperity to the city. Due to the development of handicraft industry, the development and popularization of engraving printing have been promoted, and engraving centers such as Bianjing, Lin 'an, Pingyang, Chengdu and Jianyang have appeared. Many books and Buddhist scriptures are illustrated with prints, and the existing Maitreya Buddha statue, the Maharani Sutra, the Buddhist Zen master Manjusri Guide, Zhao Chengcang and so on are all carefully carved.
Painting in Song Dynasty is the peak of the development of painting art in China. It reflects a wide range of real life content, which is extremely prominent in the history of ancient painting. He used colorful artistic forms and created many artistic expressions closely related to society. Most of the styles and theories of Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties can be found in the paintings of Song Dynasty, which shows the maturity and high prosperity of China's paintings. There are many important creations in the art of painting in Song Dynasty. Pay attention to the spiritual outlook and touching plot of the characters, and pay attention to shaping the artistic image with distinctive personality. Flower-and-bird painting and landscape painting pursue beautiful and moving artistic conception, pay attention to true and ingenious artistic expression, strive to refine images, and have a high degree of realistic ability. Literati painting can also promote the prosperity and improvement of painting art, and they have made great contributions to the exploration of subjective expression and pen and ink effect. Palace painting has been highly developed on the basis of the prosperity of painting in the whole society, and its artistic achievements can not be ignored.
On the basis of the establishment of the Painting Academy in the Southern Tang Dynasty and Western Shu in the Five Dynasties, the Hanlin Painting Academy continued to be established in the Song Dynasty to train the painting talents needed by the imperial court. Painting was once established in Song Huizong. Most emperors in Song Dynasty were interested in painting to varying degrees, especially Evonne and Hui Zong, who were obsessed with painting and neglected government affairs. Evonne himself is a calligrapher and painter. As the emperor at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, what he longed for was not the lofty ideal of defending the country, but the masters of painters from all directions, so as to expand the palace painting academy and constantly collect famous paintings to enrich the collection of the imperial palace. During the period of Huizong Zhao Ji in the Northern Song Dynasty and Gaozong Zhao Gou in the Southern Song Dynasty (reigned1127-1162), the system of the Imperial Academy in the Song Dynasty was complete. The improvement of folk painters' artistic level has delivered many excellent painters to the Academy. At this time, experts from the Academy gathered, and court painters kept in touch with the society and tried their best to cater to the royal taste. While some works strive to maintain the neat and luxurious temperament of court art since the Tang Dynasty, they also reveal the lazy and gentle charm and elegant taste of the Song Dynasty. Song Huizong's collection of calligraphy and painting in the palace is extremely rich, and there are also collectors of many officials and scholars. Xuanhe Map records the grand occasion of the palace collection. After the change of Jingkang, Bianjing was plundered by the Jin army, some painters were taken to the north, and the palace paintings were scattered in the north, which had a considerable impact on the paintings in the areas ruled by the Jin Dynasty. On the other hand, during the Southern Song Dynasty, a large number of painters went into exile in Jiangnan and worked in Gaozong Painting Academy, which also promoted the development of Jiangnan culture. The famous works of the Song Dynasty Painting Academy include Guo and his Early Spring Map, Guanshan Map, Zhang Zeduan and His Riverside Map at Qingming Festival, Wang Ximeng and His Thousand-Li Map, His Picking Wei Map, His Swimming Map, and His Water Treading Map.
Literati painting, which appeared in the Tang Dynasty, has become a huge artistic trend since the middle and late Northern Song Dynasty. The collection and evaluation of painting has become a common practice among upper-class literati, and many literati have personally participated in the practice of painting to express their feelings like poetry. Literati painters have their own opinions on theme selection and formal interest. They inscribed poems on the picture frame and opened up a new world of calligraphy and painting. Zhong Ren and Yang Wuxia's Mo Mei, Wen Tong's Bamboo, Su Shi's Ancient Wood and Strange Stone, Mi Fei, Mi Youren's Yunshan and Zhao Mengfu's Narcissus appeared in the Song Dynasty. The contribution of literati in the Northern Song Dynasty to literati painting is more manifested in theoretical achievements. Ouyang Xiu proposed to pursue "melancholy and indifference" as an aesthetic realm, while Su Shi proposed that "painting should be similar in shape and meet children's neighbors", which denied the concept that painting should imitate nature as its main function. In the traditional life of China, the network of scholars and scholars has already formed, and the ideas of literati painting and Su Shi spread rapidly, even to the Liao and Jin areas ruled by barbarians, becoming the pioneers of the development of literati painting in Yuan and Ming Dynasties.
Along the River During the Qingming Festival
Compared with the Tang Dynasty, the theme of figure painting in the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty is more extensive, and religious myths, historical stories, and literati life have all become the themes of description. Painters pay more attention to the description of facial expressions and psychology of characters, and their ability of vivid description has been improved. In terms of techniques, it develops in two directions: the first meticulous color setting method is more delicate and changeable, and the colors are also bright and colorful, and the colors are richer than those in the Tang Dynasty; In addition to Li and Zhang Zeduan's freehand brushwork, there is also a freehand brushwork in ink and wash represented by Kai Liang's works.
Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, China's ancient paintings have increasingly shown a tendency to downplay colors and admire concise and bright pen and ink patterns. Northern Song Dynasty painter Li (1049— 1 106) studied under Gu Kaizhi and Wu Daozi. His painting method, the most commendable is "sketching". Line drawing was originally only used for sketching, which is no different from the so-called "sketch" in western painting. Since Wu Daozi, painting theorists have realized that the combination of the painter's modeling skills and exquisite calligraphy will make the monochrome picture directly become the object of appreciation like calligraphy, and the effect of line drawing can be "beautiful without painting". Thanks to the rescue and full protection of Xu Beihong, a master of modern Chinese painting, the painting in the Northern Song Dynasty and the best sketch "The Battle Map of the Immortals in the Yuan Dynasty" fully reflected the magical power of this painting form. Li's "line drawing" has definitely become a pattern in the history of painting, such as Five Horses, Nine Songs, and Wei Yan's Pastoral, all of which are regarded as textbook-style works with traditional line drawing. The pen and lines are adapted to the painting object, which is both implicit and full of cadence like calligraphy.
Gong Kai (about 1222- 1304), a sketch painter in the Southern Song Dynasty, also began to learn from Wu Daozi, but his brushwork was extensive. He likes painting Mo Gui, especially Zhong Kui. Zhongshan Going on Excursion depicts Zhong Kui and his family traveling side by side, and the sedan chair, the devil, is fascinating and interesting. There is a bitter irony in his paintings, and critics in Yuan Dynasty think that you can't just play with your eyes. Kai Liang in the Southern Song Dynasty (the riverside scene at Qingming Festival is unknown locally) once entered the Painting Academy, and was also a painter who was good at sketching figures. According to literature records, after middle age, he turned meticulous painting into ink painting, which is called "freehand brushwork", with philosophical mystery in the changing ink painting. Such works have been handed down from generation to generation, such as "Six Ancestors' Map" and "Ink-splashing Fairy Map".
Zhang Zeduan's "The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival" is colored in silk, but the color is lighter. The whole painting is mainly outlined by ink lines, which reflects the neat and meticulous characteristics of Song painting. The painting is 24.8 cm high and 528.7 cm long, which depicts the prosperous scene of the riverside scene in the Qingming Festival in Bianliang (now Kaifeng, Henan) in the Northern Song Dynasty. It is a rare masterpiece in the 12 century. As a court painting, Zhang Zeduan's painting transcends the "genre painting" in the general sense. The playful scenes that show the liveliness and interest of folk activities and show folk customs can be found in the paintings of painters with low attainments in the same period, such as the Salesman's Map and the Baby's Play Map by Su Hanchen and Song Li, while the Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival calmly and objectively captures the activities of all walks of life in Bianjing during the Qingming Festival, thus achieving this scene. There are officials, clothes, businessmen, doctors, diviners, monks, Taoist priests, officials, teachers, cable workers, horses and cattle, camels, streets, rivers, ports, ponds, boats, tourists, official houses and huts. The author has a keen observation of social life and everything, a keen and profound image memory and excellent organizational composition skills. As for the vivid expression of characters, the simple and smooth brushwork of trees and waterlines, and the exquisite and harmonious scene change, all of these can be seen from the author's comprehensive cultivation in figures, landscapes and pavilions. It combines the superb skills of various paintings in the Song Dynasty into one painting, which is complex and changeable, easy to be complicated and simple, especially the careful observation and detailed depiction of characters, from which we can appreciate them one by one. Although the author is a painter, with the rigorous attitude of historians and the unique exaggeration and comedy atmosphere of folk theme pictures, he reproduces the social customs and life style at that time, as well as the traffic conditions of the lifeline of riverside traffic and the hard life of workers at that time. Above the noisy scene, the painter's thoughtful eyes are revealed.
This painting has no author's signature. Later, due to Zhang Zhu's inscription in the Jin Dynasty, the author and life revealed that Zhang Zeduan, a native of Shandong, was born and died in an unknown year. He studied in the capital of song dynasty and Song Jing, and joined the Hanlin Academy, so he gained the status of a court painter. He was highly praised by Zhang Zhu and was good at "boundary painting", that is, landscape painting or figure painting with buildings as the main body, representing battlements, streets and ships. The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival has been widely recognized by people since its publication. During the Southern Song Dynasty, there were many copies and reproductions of The Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival, some of which were sold at the price of "one roll and one gold" in Lin 'an painting shop. This fact proves the particularity of the Riverside Scene in Qingming Festival to a great extent. It not only goes beyond the general genre painting, but also is not limited to the scope of the usual palace painting and literati painting. It not only enhances the aesthetic feeling of painting, but also enhances knowledge and enlightens intelligence. It's really a treasure in ancient world paintings.