Preface from Ina Asim – New Life for an Old Painting
Several years ago I contacted Mr. Jeff Hsu in Taibei about a piece of art in his collection that has fascinated me ever since. It was the seventeenth century handscroll of the Lantern Festival in Nanjing by an anonymous painter. The scroll is titled ‘Shangyuan dengcai(tu) ’ ‘Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan’, title that it was given by the eminent art historian Xu Bangda.
Mr. Hsu instantly wrote back to me and without hesitation provided me with photographs of the painting without asking for anything but for a copy of the book to be published. Such generosity is extremely rare to find and therefore I owe Mr. Hsu my deepest gratitude.
As I started working with his photographs I learned a lot about the details of the painting but sometimes wished I could enlarge them to see with greater clarity. In the meantime I had made a professional transition from Würzburg University in Germany to the University of Oregon. Here the work on the scroll developed in a new direction and took on a different dimension. With the technical equipment available at the University of Oregon the painting could be electronically cleaned, a process which enhanced the ‘readability’ of the scroll to a degree I could not have dreamed off.
Coincidence and luck helped me to find a dream team of collaborators in a very short time. Su-chen Chang provided much more than a translation of the texts for the bilingual comments on the CD and the manual, she also adapted the texts for a Chinese audience with great care and precision. When Mr. Hsu generously offered to loan the painting to the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon she was in charge of the correspondence, a task that brought her more than one sleepless night in which she effortlessly bridged not only the difference between Pacific Time and Taibei gallery hours and but also the differences in juridical regulations for art loans.
Garron Hale cleaned the painting electronically from the darkening process the painting had suffered over the centuries. With utmost attention to detail he electronically ‘washed’ the painting in a painstaking process that left the original untouched and produced the brilliant and precise reproduction you find on the CD. He is the designer of the elegant layout, the viewer-friendly navigation of the various functions hidden in the menus, and the manual. To Su-chen and Garron: my heartfelt thanks for your idealism and unconditional support! Without you the CD project would not have been possible.
I am much obliged to Cathleen Leué and Maram Epstein who revised the manuscript with scrutinizing eyes and polished my phrases into decent English. Lori O’Hollaren was a wizard in securing our financial survival. Brian Floyd programmed countless ideas into practical applications and Jacob Bartruff spent nights on the adaptation of maps from the Ming for us modern viewers. Yu Mueller-Chiu came from Germany and joined Brian Hebb to give their fine voices to the invitation that the painter extends to us:
Join the celebration of an old tradition and preserve its riches for posterity – they are the roots of the future!
For quick reference the texts in the manual are identical with the texts on the CD. Some of the explanations of details repeat information that appears in the longer texts. Thus the CD viewer does not have to read the longer background texts before viewing details of the painting.
Any errors are my responsibility. For comments and critique please contact me at:
Ina Asim
Department of History
University of Oregon
317 McKenzie Hall
Eugene, OR 97403
USA
Email: inaasim@uoregon.edu
Ina Asim Eugene, September 2004
The painting Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan
The handscroll ‘Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan’ is from the brush of an anonymous painter. There is no colophon or inscription giving his name. The eight seals that are found in the beginning and end of the scroll cannot be associated with a particular painter. We have to assume that it is a work by a commercial artist that was commissioned by a wealthy patron. The density of the figures in the painting and the meticulous execution of overlapping details suggest that the painting is from one hand though the outline drawing of architectural structures could sometimes be executed by a different person.
Usually cityscapes or narrative paintings were first sketched as a draft of outline drawings (fenben), in this case on silk. Then the painter used ink and colors to execute the painting. Originally the painting may have had slightly different dimensions than the 25,5 cm in width and 266,6 cm in length that we measure today. The digital cleaning allows for magnification of the upper edge of the painting which is not only irregular but reveals traces of a formerly wider rim and of manipulations. The upper edge has been trimmed probably during a previous remounting of the painting. Trimming of the edges happens quite frequently when a painting is remounted because the old mounting strips that frame the painting have to be removed and new strips are then attached. In this process utmost care is essential but once the edge has been damaged the drawing on the rim is lost.
An attempt was made by someone to repair the details that were damaged during the mounting process. These repairs were undertaken with good intentions but were unskillfully executed. In addition, the electronic wash brought to light several damaged areas in the silk and revealed eight faces of persons that have been amateurishly re-painted with white paint.
The schematic drawing below shows the common mounting of a handscroll. The entire painting is backed by a long strip of paper that is wider than the painting (1). The ends of the backing paper are needed to stabilize the fragile painting medium made of paper or silk. The ends also hold blank paper or silk which contain the collectors’ comments and seals (2) as well as one or more colophons (3). Handscrolls are opened by holding the slender rod on the right around which the backing paper is attached (4) and unrolling the painting with the left hand. The initial front part of the scroll on the right side (5) serves to protect the painting when it is rolled up again. It is therefore reinforced on both sides, the outside with heavy brocade, and the inside with light silk. The left end of the scroll consists of a roller (6) adorned with knobs at both ends (7). These knobs can be made of wood, ivory, or jade and can be decorated. When the scroll is rolled up for storage, a silk band is wound around it to keep the layers firmly in place to prevent damage from irregular tension or insects.
(The drawing follows van Gulik, 1993, 67).
Yang Xin, senior curator of the Palace Museum in Beijing, has dated the Shangyuan dengcai scroll to the reign periods Wanli to Tianqi (1573-1627) of the mid to late Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The painting belongs to the genre of narrative scrolls depicting customs (fengsu hua) and human activities (renwu hua).
There are several criteria that help to date the painting. The first criterion is fashion. The headgear worn by the officials in the painting was a common part of the attire of Ming officials indicating their position. In addition, we find a few celebrities of rank who are wearing red shoes, a trend that has been criticized by Ming writers as a decadent custom. Red shoes belonged to the wardrobe of women and originally were associated with the attractions related to bound lotus feet. Men, especially those of high standing, transgressed this border of gendered fashion. Many late Ming paintings document that officials including abbots and emperors came to enjoy wearing red shoes.
The second criterion is eyeglasses. We see two men wearing spectacles and a monocle respectively. Spectacles had been invented in Italy around 1290 and had first appeared in China by the mid fifteenth century. They had first been imported as tribute gifts from Persia to the imperial court. It took about one hundred years until they became a more widely available yet costly commodity. The city of Hangzhou on the southeastern coast became the center of production and export of spectacles, mostly to Japan, when the technology of cutting lenses had been developed and refined in China in the late Ming.