Few Thoughts on Chinese Paintings - Guest post by XiaoChen Zhang

This is a guest post by one of my best friends at Google Sydney: XiaoChen Zhang (Susan). Susan graduated from University of Wollongong with a bachelor in Computer Science and currently works in Enterprise Sales at Google. In her spare time, Susan is a freelance translator and Mandarin tutor who shares her love of Chinese culture and language with her students and clients.

Over the last 3 years, I've translated quite a few different kinds of documents. Most common jobs are websites, business certificates, video scripts etc.

Recently, I've got an quite interesting request from a lady who found me on Gumtree, asking me to help identify a few words on the artworks she brought back from China.

First I thought it might be ancient poems, or maybe something like a "Chinese Couplet" but I was wrong. The images she sent me for translation advice are actually Chinese Seal, artists' signatures printed on stamps.

I haven't seen these kind of artworks since I was a child.

A bit of background, I used to learn Chinese Calligraphy from my grandfather when I was around 9 years old. He is very interested in Chinese Calligraphy and Painting Appreciation. On weekends he always brought me to Antiques Market - that's where I learned many stories behind different pieces of paintings. It was a bit hard for me to understand when I was young, but my interests has certainly grown since then.

The image below is one of those photos sent by the lady. After I got her permission, I decide to share it with you.

I knew instantly that the original painting (Gong-bi, Meticulous) was from 郎世寧 (Shining Lang). It was painted around 300 years ago (I don't know the exact year since he had thousands of paintings). His name could be identified from the right corner of the piece on the right, along with his seal. 

The big red seal on the upper-left corner states that this artwork been collected in Qianlong Emperor 's studio - Sanxitang( a museum which stores three kinds of rare artworks) where the Emperor of Qing Dynasty kept rare treasures especially Calligraphy and paintings from Xizhi Wang, Xianzhi Wang and Xun Wang.

The real piece of this painting should be safely and well stored in China Museum. So how do I tell whether this is a good imitation, or how close it is to the real one?

There are three points to look out for:

1. Painting characteristics There's a bird in Shining's painting. It looks like it was looking for its friends or singing.
   
   Qianlong Emperor didn't like birds to look downwards or flowers depicted as withering - which may imply dying, decline, bad luck to him or his country. So most of paintings Shining did were like this one: the bird is looking up, which means his country or his power will become stronger and growing day after day; Similarly, in the painting on the left, the flowers are blooming, symbolizing prosperity of the society under his rule. These characteristics match Qianlong's preference and appreciation on paintings, so, it's not a bad copy from the first look.
   
2. Painting materials Taking a closer look of the paper itself, it is Xuan paper. That's different from what we write on or use in printers nowadays. Xuan paper does not look as white as paper today, and is also a bit rough on the surface. Its thickness is not consist throughout the whole piece, some place feels thicker, some thinner. From this, the painting appeared to be from someone who knew about Chinese culture and the history associated to the original painting.
3. Seal In Qing Dynasty and many other Dynasties in Chinese history, calligraphers and painters normally use Zhusha Seal or other types which mainly made from minerals. After thousands of years, the seal would appear to be a bit unclear, broken, fade-away - it definitely can't be as clear as the one shows below. The person who forged this one might have just used a red inkpad to imitate the real piece. However he was thoughtful as he made the seal not looks as brand new as from last year.

Overall, they are quite good imitations from my personal view. It certainly represents certain history and culture of its time.

Let me know if you want to know more about Chinese calligraphy or paintings, would love to discuss more about it with you. 

This is a guest post by one of my best friends at Google Sydney: XiaoChen Zhang (Susan). Susan graduated from University of Wollongong with a bachelor in Computer Science and currently works in Enterprise Sales at Google. In her spare time, Susan is a freelance translator and Mandarin tutor who shares her love of Chinese culture and language with her students and clients.