The Great Nuo Exorcism (大傩图轴)
Most Song painting shows scholars and courtiers. This one shows people laughing behind masks, and it is a gift to anyone who wants to know how ordinary Son…
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Loquat and Mountain Bird (赵佶枇杷山鸟图页)
The most demanding art patron in Chinese history also painted small things with enormous care. A loquat branch with a single bird carries his manner, and t…
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One Hundred Flowers (百花图卷)
Someone in the Song dynasty walked a garden with a brush and set down one flower after another. The result is a handscroll now called One Hundred Flowers,…
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Reed Banks in Heavy Snow (梁师闵芦汀密雪图卷)
A Northern Song court painter left us a winter so quiet you can almost hear the cold. Liang Shimin painted it. The handscroll is now called Reed Banks in H…
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Lotus in Bloom (出水芙蓉图页)
A single lotus flower, painted by an unknown Song hand, does more honest observing in one leaf than most decorative flower pictures manage in a wall.
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The Goddess of the Luo River (顾恺之洛神赋图卷（宋摹）)
The most famous love poem in Chinese literature became the most copied painting in Chinese art. The Goddess of the Luo River, after Gu Kaizhi, is the Palac…
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Lives of Exemplary Women (顾恺之列女仁智图卷（宋摹）)
Gu Kaizhi again, and again through a copy. Lives of Exemplary Women is the companion lesson to his Admonitions, a picture built from biographies of virtuou…
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Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies (顾恺之女史箴图卷（宋摹）)
Gu Kaizhi is the name that opens the history of Chinese figure painting, and this scroll is why. Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies surviv…
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Cloudy Mountains (米友仁云山墨戏图卷)
Mi Youren inherited a way of seeing and made it a method. His handscroll Cloudy Mountains is the ink play that gave Chinese landscape its softest, most atm…
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Snowy River and Returning Boats (赵佶雪江归棹图卷)
Emperor Huizong painted snow the way he painted everything, with absolute control and a faint cold elegance. His handscroll Snowy River and Returning Boats…
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