Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings

Amy McNair, Amy McNair

• Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781501766725
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Asian Art

Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings is the first complete translation of the well-known document produced at the court of Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1125). Dated to 1120, the Catalogue is divided into ten categories of subject matter. Under Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, Figural Subjects, Architecture, Barbarian Tribes, Dragons and Fish, Landscape, Domestic and Wild Animals, Flowers and Birds, Ink Bamboo, and Vegetables and Fruit are biographies of 231 painters, ranging from famous early masters, such as Wu Daozi (ca. 685-758) and Li Cheng (919-967), to otherwise unknown artists of the Song-dynasty court, including fourteen eunuch officials and sixteen male and female members of the royal family. Titles of their pictures held in the palace collection are listed for each artist. These 6, 396 paintings testify to the visual culture experienced by viewers of the twelfth century. The author's Introduction analyzes the Catalogue as a source of evidence about the formation of the Song-dynasty palace collection and argues that the majority of its pictures were already in the collection before Huizong's reign, as a result of conquest, confiscation, tribute, gift culture, collecting by earlier emperors, and the production of academy artists and regular officials at the Song court. Under Huizong's reign, around a thousand other pictures were added to the Catalogue through acquisition and reattribution.

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Table of Contents of Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings

1. Preface to Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings
2. Explanation of the Categories
3. Chapter One
4. Prefatory Explanation for Daoist and Buddhist Subjects
5. Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, One
6. Chapter Two
7. Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, Two
8. Chapter Three
9. Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, Three
10. Chapter Four
11. Daoist and Buddhist Subjects, Four
12. Chapter Five
13. Prefatory Explanation for Figural Subjects
14. Figural Subjects, One
15. Chapter Six
16. Figural Subjects, Two
17. Chapter Seven
18. Figural Subjects, Three
19. Chapter Eight
20. Prefatory Explanation for Architecture
21. Architecture
22. Prefatory Explanation for Barbarian Tribes
23. Barbarian Tribes
24. Chapter Nine
25. Prefatory Explanation for Dragons and Fish
26. Dragons and Fish
27. Chapter Ten
28. Prefatory Explanation for Landscape
29. Landscape, One
30. Chapter Eleven
31. Landscape, Two
32. Chapter Twelve
33. Landscape, Three
34. Chapter Thirteen
35. Prefatory Explanation for Domestic and Wild Animals
36. Domestic and Wild Animals, One
37. Chapter Fourteen
38. Domestic and Wild Animals, Two
39. Chapter Fifteen
40. Prefatory Explanation for Flowers and Birds
41. Flowers and Birds, One
42. Chapter Sixteen
43. Flowers and Birds, Two
44. Chapter Seventeen
45. Flowers and Birds, Three
46. Chapter Eighteen
47. Flowers and Birds, Four
48. Chapter Nineteen
49. Flowers and Birds, Five
50. Chapter Twenty
51. Prefatory Explanation for Ink Bamboo
52. Ink Bamboo
53. Prefatory Explanation for Vegetables and Fruit
54. Vegetables and Fruit

Preface to Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings

When “the [Yellow] River issued the diagram, and the Luo [River] issued the writing,”¹ the tortoise and dragon delineations first made their appearance. The use of insect- and bird-[script characters] by later generations [indicates that] the general forms of the tortoise and dragon [delineations] were not yet lost.² By the time of Yu, they displayed the five colors and made depictions of tigers and monkeys [on official clothing], and due to this making of images, [painting and writing] were gradually separated. According to the Zhou Official System, the Sons of State were taught the six [kinds of] characters. The third of these was called “pictographic,” and here the so-called identity of calligraphy and painting was still preserved.³ Thereafter, however, in order to recognize hill-spirits and to [let the people] know [the distinctions between] the helping and the harming spirits, they were engraved onto [bronze] bells and tripods;⁴ in order to clarify the rites and music and to display the laws and regulations, [imagery] was held aloft on banners and flags. The esteem for painting and drawing began with this. Hence, although painting is merely a skill, the ancient sages were never indifferent to it. From the Three Dynasties on, its ability to extol worthy service and to record [discrepancies between] reputation and reality was considered the way to complete the insufficiency of [words written] on bamboo and silk to describe great virtue.⁵ Thus the [portraits] in the Cloud Terrace and the Unicorn Pavilion were made, so that those of later times who looked at them were able to imagine these people.⁶ The purpose of paintings is this: good people are [depicted] to show [their virtue] to their contemporaries and bad people to serve as a warning to those who come later.⁷ How could anyone take the variegations of the five colors merely as a worldly amusement?⁸ Now when the Son of Heaven⁹ has no business in the palace or imperial temple, when he continues the inheritance from the sages of successive dynasties whose enduring merit through the generations has brought the empire peace, when the watchman’s rattle is silent at Yuguan,¹⁰ and when there is no smoke of beacon-fires on the border, then he may concentrate on pictures and books, with the hope that by seeing the good, he will take it as a warning against evil, while seeing the evil will make him think on the virtuous, as well as making him better acquainted with the names of many insects, fishes, grasses, and trees.¹¹ Things that cannot be fully described in writing or whose appearance cannot be widely known can be seen completely in [pictures]. There is no lack of other people in addition to those recorded in this Catalogue, but their personalities and styles are common and coarse. Those not worthy of mention these days have been eliminated, and only those who will encourage those to come have been included. Therefore, what is compiled here from the holdings of the palace repository, by 231 famous painters from the Wei-Jin period onward, totals 6,396 scrolls, divided into ten categories and given critical rankings in chronological order.¹² In the gengzi year of the Proclaiming Harmony era, on the day of the summer solstice.¹³

1. 1. Quoting from Yijing, Xici shang, in Shisan jing, 2 v. (Beijing: Beijing Yanshan, 1991), 1:80. Han-dynasty commentators such as Kong Anguo (ca. 156–ca. 74 BCE) and Liu Xin explain that in the time of the legendary culture-hero Fuxi, a dragon-horse emerged from the Yellow River and on its back the hair was swirled into the constellations, which was called the Dragon Diagram. From this, Fuxi drew the Eight Trigrams and invented milfoil divination. When Yu (ca. 2070 BCE) of Xia was channeling the waters of the land, a divine tortoise emerged from the Luo River and on its back were patterns of cracks. These patterns were like characters, so from them Yu made the “Nine Divisions.” See “Shangshu zhengyi,” in Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), ed., Shisan jing zhushu, 2 v. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980), 12.75; 18.125; and Ban Gu (32–92), Han shu, annotated by Yan Shigu (581–645) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1962), 27.1315.
2. 2. These scripts arose in the Spring and Autumn Period (770–...