Five-colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree 五色鸚鵡圖卷 - Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (Introduction)
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| Five-colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree 五色鸚鵡圖卷
Artist: Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (1082–1135 (reigned 1101-1125)), Chinese, Northern Song dynasty Date: 1110s Materials: Ink and color on silk Dimensions: 53.3 x 125.1 cm (21 x 49 14 in.) Museum of Fine Arts, BostonMaria Antoinette Evans Fund Museum scroll information: Five-colored Parakeet on Blossoming Apricot Tree 五色鸚鵡圖卷 |
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| Introduction Emperor Huizong 徽宗 (given name Zhao Ji 趙佶, 1082-1135, reigned 1101-1125) was the last emperor of the Northern Song dynasty (960-1127). Not only a skilled painter and calligrapher himself, he was also an important patron of the arts, introduced many changes at the Imperial Painting Academy (the court artists' institution), and gathered a large collection of paintings, calligraphy, and other objects. The short handscroll Five-colored Parakeet is an example of the genre of bird-and-flower painting 花鳥畫 popular at the Northern Song court, emphasizing a detailed rendition of realistic details such as the bird's feathers. The handscroll combines the painting of the bird and blossoming tree branches with a calligraphic section on the right side of the scroll executed in Huizong's distinctive slender-gold (shou jin 瘦金) calligraphy and with his signature. The inscription consists of a brief preface and a poem describing the circumstances that lead to the production of the painting. While some scholars claim this handscroll to be one of the most reliable attributions to the hand of Emperor Huizong, others have instead suggested to consider it as a painting authored by Huizong (i.e. commissioned and authorized) but not necessarily executed by the emperor's hand. Five-colored Parakeet shares formal features with two other extant paintings attributed to Huizong: Cranes over Kaifeng 瑞鸖圖卷 in the Liaoning Provincial Museum and Auspicious Dragon Rock 詳龍石圖卷 in the Beijing Palace Museum. All three handscrolls combine an image of a specific object or event with a written preface and poem by Huizong describing the circumstances. The three handscrolls are recording auspicious events that occurred during Huizong's reign, thus they affirm the emperor's imperial authority, imply a prosperous future for his reign, and function as efficacious images. Because the position of Huizong's inscription is to the left side of the paintings in the Liaoning and Beijing scrolls, it has been suggested that the order in the Boston scroll should also be reversed, which would resolve the current compositional problem, in which the emperor's signature awkwardly intrudes onto the painting's space. The current placement of calligraphy and painting may be a result of a mistake made during remounting the scroll, but it is also possible that calligraphy and painting were not produced together and that one part is a later fabrication. It has also been suggested that Five-Colored Parakeet and the other two handscrolls originally belonged to a larger project of depicting and recording auspicious events under Huizong in a monumental work titled Xuanhe ruilan ce 宣和睿覽冊 (Albums for the Emperor's Perusal in the Xuanhe Period) as recorded by Deng Chun 鄧椿 (active mid-12th century) in Hua ji 畫繼 (Continuation of Painting History). Reference: Wu Tung (ed.), Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston : Tang through Yuan Dynasties, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts and Tokyo: Otsuka Kogeisha, 1996, v.1 cat. no. 9, pp.23ff. Wu Tung (ed.), Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting, Exhibition Catalog, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1997, cat. no. 13, pp. 140f. Maggie Bickford, “Emperor Huizong and the Aesthetic of Agency,” in: Patricia Ebrey and Maggie Bickford (ed.): Emperor Huizong. The Politics of Culture and the Culture of Politics, Harvard University Press, 2006, 71-104 Peter Sturman, “Cranes above Kaifeng: The Auspicious Image at the Court of Huizong,” Ars Orientalis v.20 (1990), 33-68 Tomita Kojiro, “The Five Colored Parakeet by Hui Tsung,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts v. 31, no. 178 (October 1933), 75-79 Benjamin Rowland Jr., “The Problem of Hui Tsung,” Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, v. 5 (1951) Betty Tseng Yu-ho Ecke, Emperor Hui Tsung, The Artist: 1082-1136, Dissertation: New York University, 1972 | ||||