Many ancientChinese paintingscontain thesealsand signatures of both the painter and the collector. There is one famous Chinese painting, theQingming Festival by the Riverside, which is covered with innumerable signatures and seals, indicating it had been in the hands of many private and official collectors. The painting survived many calamities and historical shifts and was handed down to the present; some collectors even sacrificed their lives in order to preserve this art treasure.
Qingming Festival by the Riverside (left)
The picture was done by the Song painter Zhang Zeduan. He was a native ofShandong Province, and studied painting in his early years in Bianjing (present-dayKaifeng), the capital of theNorthern Song Dynasty. Later he became a painter of the Imperial Painting Academy of the Northern Song Dynasty. Though there are not many historical records of him, his name is remembered simply because of this great art work.
Qingming Festival by the Riversideis a long colored painted scroll with a length of 528 cm and a height of 24.8 cm. It portrays the noisy street scenes of Bianjing during the Qingming Festival (a festival for the mourning of ancestors). During that time, people kept the custom of going to street fairs at the Qingming Festival. The painting has complicated scenes with rigorous structures. The painting can be divided into three parts: scenes of the suburb, the Bian River and the city streets.
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