Along The River During Qing Ming Festival Analysis

“The Maid” (25.2 x 26.7) fan painting by Su Hanchen

Fig 8. chinadaily.com.cn, (2014). The Maid.

Su Hanchen (1094- 1127) is the Academy painter serving for the royal family in Northern Song dynasty in Xuanhe era (1119- 1125) under the ruling of Emperor Huizong and the Shaoxing era (1131- 1162) under the ruling of Emperor Gaozong. Su Hanchen was specialized in painting children and women. He’s most famous paintings are all depicting children playing in a realistic and vivid way. This painting of women is selected for this essay because it includes many furniture and decorations as its subjects, and has a relatively fully filled composition comparing to many other traditional Chinese paintings, which only have their many subjects with almost nothing in the background. The

It depicts the city life of Song dynasty. From the rural parts of the city on the sides of the painting to the urban area in the middle, the artist illustrates every detail of the painting vividly. The artist Zhan Zeduan, is one of the greatest artist from the era of Song Dynasty. This painting was painting during the period from Southern Song Dynasty to Northern Song Dynasty when Zhan was in the Hanlin Huayuan (the Imperial Academy Painting department).

The painting “Along the River During Qing Ming Festival”uses also oblique perspective as many other traditional Chinese paintings. Zhan certainly depicted the building is in the front larger than the one in the back. Which shows his understanding of the basic perspectives. However, for individual objects in the painting, Zhan didn’t paint the further end smaller according to the rule of linear perspective. The sides of the roofs of houses in the painting are all parallel. And the two ends of the bridge in the middle of the painting were equally wide, which according to the rule of linear perspective the rear end should be