Original Description:
The digitization of the Chinese scroll Colorful Lanterns at Shangyuan on an educational CD aims at combining historical and art historical considerations for the study of Chinese genre scroll paintings of cityscapes. It is a great opportunity to have this treasure which today is housed in the Hsü collection in Taibei come to live again on a new medium for a new generation of admirers.
This scroll represents a rich source of information regarding the economic situation and sociological structure of cities. This category of painting originated in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and was further developed in the subsequent dynasties. Since the Song dynasty, cities had evolved from administrative centers representing government authority to economic entrepôts. The system of walled wards and nightly curfews had been abandoned for a street-oriented structure with markets and shops lining the streets and offering their goods day and night. This economic revolution challenged the definition of cities as ritual and administrative centers. The changes in the role of the city are vividly captured in handscrolls depicting scenes of urban life, merchant and artisan activities, and entertainment. Considered to have been mostly commissioned by wealthy merchants who patronized commercial artisans, this category of painting represents a unique source commemorating specific features of the depicted cities.
The painting presented here is from the brush of an anonymous painter from the mid to late Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It depicts a street in the southern capital of Ming China, Nanjing, on the occasion of the Lantern Festival. This public display of colorful lanterns that compete in size and design concludes the celebrations welcoming the New Year and continues even today. In Ming Nanjing the festival was accompanied by activities that were designed to delight everybody. In the painting we find scholar-officials and wealthy citizens who meet in restaurants for tea, wine, food, and female company. Others stroll across the market where they indulge in their passion for collecting. Books, paintings, musical instruments, furniture for the house, potted plants and landscapes for the studio or garden, and animals for the park are for sale in the market. The painting shows all the ‘must have’ items described in the manuals of taste and style popular at the time. People interested in more mundane entertainments are shown while betting and gambling, listening to storytellers, or observing the attempts of players to balance a football or shuttlecock in the air. There are wrestlers and fortune tellers, toy vendors and servants leading horses through the street. This painting documents the enjoyments of the festival in a more lively way than any other medium including plays, songs, poems, sculptures, carvings or embroidery.