0011 - Lacquer painting on wooden planks. Fragments off lacquered wooden sc...Front

Lacquer painting on wooden planks. Fragments off lacquered wooden screens found in the tomb of Ssuma Ching-lung of the Northern Wei. The painting is executed on a red lacquer background by first drawing the outlines in back lacquer and then filling them with pigments of yellow, white, green, blue, black and orange. The themes depicted are derived from legends of well-known figures in Chinese history. By resorting to the traditional "structural method in the use brush", the artist has succeeded in portraying the figures in a very life-like manner. The inscriptions accompanying the paintings are written in a mixed style of the li shu (clerical writing) and k'ai shu (official writing), which is rarely encountered among the extant examples of the Northern Wei calligraphy. Apart from their intrinsic value as handicraft art works of the Northern Wei, these fragments have also preserved for us rare specimens of the art of painting of the time. Northern Wei (A.D. 386-534). H. 81.5 cm. Unearthed in 1966 at Tatung, Shansi Province.