Upper River during Qing Ming Festival

Without any doubts, "Upper River during Qing Ming Festival" is one of the most renowned paintings in Chinese history. It was a very long water color landscape scroll on silk created by artist royal Zhang Zeduan of Northern Song Dynasty. In all the several hundreds years since then, many forgeries, imitations, and replicas under the same name were made over and over by various people all the time. It has been quite a challenge to really tell the fakes from the authentic.

This scan presented here was a gift from a friendly netter at Singapore who has visited the Great Empire of China here before. This painting, however, is an authentic imitation of the "Upper River during Qing Ming Festival". His Holiness Grand Master has learned from an artist and historian friend of his that this painting scroll was actually created by five artists of the royal court of Qing Dynasty for Emperor Qian Long (You may refer to the handwritings and seal of his majesty at the beginning of the scroll). It is therefore referred among scholars as "Academy Version" (those five artists belong to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts) of the "Upper River during Qing Ming Festival". It has been collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

Whether original or imitations, "Upper River during Qing Ming Festival" scroll is not simply a scenic landscape painting but also in essence a historical snapshot of the people and society at that time. It depicts the scenes along the both banks of the Bian River of the capital city of Bian Liang (Kaifeng, Henan Province today) of Northern Song Dynasty during the Qing Ming Festival. It includes pastoral scene in countryside, festivities in local town, busy metropolitan area and markets, and beautiful royal palace garden, with people from all walks of life (about 500 to 600 people counted). The artistic methodologies in this landscape scroll, to certain extend, is miraculously similar to those in China's greatest classic novel of Ming Dynasty "Jin Ping Mei" (also telling a story of Song Dynasty).