Along the River During the Qingming Festival
One of China's top ten famous paintings handed down from generation to generation. This Northern Song Dynasty genre painting is 24.8 centimeters wide and 528.7 centimeters long. It is painted on silk. It is the only surviving masterpiece of the Northern Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan and is a first-class national treasure. "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" vividly records the face of urban life in China in the twelfth century, which is unique in the history of painting in China and the world.
The work is in the form of a long scroll, using the composition method of scattered perspective to integrate the complex scenery into a unified and varied picture. The painting is mainly divided into two parts, one is the countryside, and the other is It's a market. There are 814 people, 83 livestock, 29 ships, more than 30 houses and buildings, 13 vehicles, 14 sedan chairs, 17 bridges, and about 180 trees. They come and go with different clothes and different expressions, lifelike, and interspersed with them. Various activities pay attention to the plot, the composition is dense and dense, full of rhythm and rhyme changes, and the writing and ink composition are very clever and show great skills.
This painting depicts the prosperity of Bianjing during the Qingming Festival. It is a witness to the prosperity of Bianjing that year and a portrayal of the urban economic situation in the Northern Song Dynasty. It vividly depicts the daily social life and life of Bianjing, the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. Customs and customs. Through this painting, we can understand the urban appearance of the Northern Song Dynasty and the lives of people of all walks of life at that time. In short, "Along the River During Qingming Festival" has extremely high historical value.
The center of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" is composed of a rainbow-shaped bridge and the street surface of Qiaotou Street. At first glance, the place is crowded and chaotic; at closer inspection, these people are from different industries and are engaged in various activities. There are some vendors and many tourists on the west side of the bridge. There are knives, scissors, and groceries on the stalls. There are tea sellers and fortune tellers. Many tourists relied on the railings on the side of the bridge to point and watch the boats passing by in the river. On the sidewalk in the middle of the bridge, there is a bustling flow of people; there are people sitting in sedan chairs, riding horses, carrying burdens, driving donkeys to transport goods, and pushing wheelbarrows... The south side of the bridge is connected to the main street. On both sides of the street are teahouses, taverns, pawn shops, and workshops. There are many small vendors with big umbrellas in the open spaces on both sides of the street. The street extends to the east and west, all the way to the quieter suburbs outside the city. However, there are still people on the street: some are carrying burdens, some are driving ox carts to deliver goods, some are driving donkeys to pull trucks, and some are stopping to watch the Bianhe River. The view.
There are many ships coming and going on the Bianhe River. It can be said that thousands of sails are racing and hundreds of boats are competing for the current. Some are anchored near the pier, and some are driving in the river. Some large ships were overloaded, so the owners hired many trackers to pull the ships along. A large ship carrying cargo has sailed under the bridge and will soon pass through the bridge opening. At this time, the boatman on the big boat seemed very busy. Some stood on the top of the boat canopy and lowered the sail; some used poles on the side of the boat; some used long poles to hold up the roof of the bridge to allow the boat to pass safely along the current. This tense scene attracted the attention of tourists on the bridge and nearby boatmen, who stood aside and cheered. "Along the River During Qingming Festival" vividly depicts the busy and tense transportation scenes on the Bian River, adding to the life atmosphere of the painting.
Zhang Zeduan has a high degree of artistic generalization, which makes "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" reach a high artistic level. "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" is unprecedented in its rich content, numerous characters, and grand scale. The paintings in "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" are dense and orderly, from the quiet suburbs to the lively urban streets, and are fascinating everywhere.
According to statistics from "Zhuodang Wenhua 6.1 Volume 8" written by Ken Saito, there are 1,659 people of various colors and 209 animals (only) in "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", which is more than There are more characters depicted in any of the classic novels "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (1,195 people), "A Dream of Red Mansions" (975 people), and "Water Margin" (785 people).
The whole picture of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" can be divided into three paragraphs. When you expand the picture, the first thing you see is the scenery on the outskirts of Bianjing. The middle section mainly depicts the busy scene of Shangtu Bridge and both sides of the Dabian River. The latter section depicts the street scene in Bianjing city. The figures are less than 3 centimeters in size and as small as beans. If you look closely, you will see that each figure is complete in form and spirit, showing every detail, and is full of interest.
According to the inscriptions and postscripts of Li Dongyang, a man from the Ming Dynasty who came after the picture, there should be a section in front of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" depicting suburban landscapes, with an inscription signed by Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty in thin gold script and a small double-dragon seal for his collection. , these are now missing from the paintings. There are two reasons. One possibility is that this picture has been circulated for too long and has been played and appreciated by countless people. The beginning of the picture is broken, so later generations cut it off when framing it; the other possibility is that Huizong of the Song Dynasty The inscription and the double dragon seal were valuable, but later generations deliberately cut them off, made another painting and sold it.
Many experts also speculate that a large part of the second half of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" has been lost, because the painting should not stop abruptly when it enters Kaifeng City, but should end at Jinming Pond. However, more experts believe that the name of the picture "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" means going to the river during the Qingming Festival (the specific purpose will not be discussed yet), and the willow tree at the end of the picture is where the master and servant are traveling, which can be regarded as The protagonist of the daydream, then the meaning of the name of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" can be fully explained. On the contrary, some experts believe that the beginning of the painting is abrupt, as if the beginning was artificially cut off. Because there is an inscription by Song Huizong at the beginning of the original painting, the theory that it was cut for profit is more credible.