Han Xizai's night feast
Gu Hongzhong (Southern Tang)
Silk coloring
28.7cm×335.5cm
Collection of the Palace Museum
"Han Xizai's Night Feast" is one of the top ten famous paintings in China, which depicts the scene of the southern Tang Dynasty eunuch Han Xizai's family feasting and enjoying in the form of a series of long scrolls.
It is precisely because of it that we can get a glimpse of the food, clothing, music, dance and culture of the Southern Tang Dynasty thousands of years ago, and it also preserves the story of Han Xizai and Li Hou lord in this special art form to this day.
Gu Hongzhong (c. 910 – 980), a famous figure painter of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was a native of Jiangnan. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, he ascended to the throne, and later fled to the south to avoid chaos, and served as a waiter in the Southern Tang Dynasty, a scholar of the Guangzheng Temple, and other officials. Later, he served as the Southern Tang Painting Academy to be edicted, painting figures with a round brush, turning with a square pen, setting colors, and being good at depicting the mood of the characters, which was on a par with Zhou Wenji.
The portrait of Li Yu, the lord of the paintings, has little record of Gu Hongzhong's creative activities in the historical materials, and "Han Xizai's Night Feast Map" is an important work basis for discussing and studying his creative ideas and artistic achievements, and the works found in the history of painting are also "Emperor Wutong Diagram", "Youshan Yin Map", "Snow Village Map", "Heqian Youpu" and so on.
Regarding the drawing of the "Han Xizai Night Feast Map", there are two reasons in history, one is that because Han Xizai was proud of the door, he was able to excel and enter the Southern Tang Dynasty houguan to Zhongshu Shilang. Seeing that the political rivers of the Southern Tang Dynasty were declining, they were powerless to recover it, so they were "ashamed of it, so they were obscure."
Another theory is that because Han Xizai was a very talented official, from a northern noble family, and in the last years of the Tang Dynasty, his father was cursed for the incident, Han Xizai fled to Jiangnan and surrendered to the Southern Tang.
At first, he was deeply favored by Li Jing, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, and after the later lord Li Yu succeeded to the throne, because the Later Zhou in the north threatened the security of the Southern Tang at that time, Li Yu on the one hand humiliated and asked for peace with the Northern Zhou, and on the other hand, he suspected and framed the officials from the north, and the internal struggle within the entire Southern Tang ruling group was fierce and precarious.
Therefore, in this environment, in order to protect himself, Han Xizai, who is in a high position, deliberately pretends to be a corrupt and drunk and dreaming fool in life, so that Li Hou lord will not suspect that he is a person with political ambitions and seek self-preservation.
Pictures and information from the "Palace Museum official website"
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