As one of the top ten famous paintings in China, "Han Xizai's Night Feast" is undoubtedly a very important work in China's ancient calligraphy and painting. Its author is said to be Gu Hongzhong, a Southern Tang painter during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. At present, there are two kinds of facsimiles handed down: one is a facsimile of the Song Dynasty, which is colored on silk, representing the highest level of heavy color in ancient times, and is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing; in addition, there is a facsimile of tang Yin, a calligrapher and painter of the Ming Dynasty, which is now in the collection of the China Three Gorges Museum in Chongqing.
The "Picture of Han Xizai's Night Feast" depicts the scene of han Xizai, a Southern Tang official at that time, setting up a night feast and singing and enjoying music in his home. The lines of the whole work are fine and smooth, the colors are gorgeous and elegant, especially the color is richer and more harmonious, and the plain makeup of the ladies contrasts with the blue and black clothes of the male guests. It has a high artistic level and archaeological research value. But the reason for the creation of the painting is very interesting.
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Regarding the drawing of the "Han Xizai Night Feast Map", there are two historical records, the first of which is the record on the "Xuanhe Pictorial Notation". Han Xizai was proud of his talents and entered the Southern Tang Dynasty and became a posthumous official 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."
Li Yu, the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was a very interesting king, and he very much wanted to reuse Han Xizai to save the Southern Tang, but after hearing the folklore that Han Xizai had some "drinking in the wine room, exhausting his materials, and causing entertainment to be polluted by hundreds of people", he ordered his painter Gu Hongzhong to come to The first place of Han Xizai's mansion at night, "peek" at every scene of Han Xizai's entertainment at home and paint it, hoping to use the way of pictures to persuade Han Xizai to stop the debauched life of singing and dancing at night.
Regarding this statement, it is also recorded in the "Supplement to the History of the Five Dynasties": "Han Xizai's life in his later years was absurd," the false lord knew it, although he was angry, and his ministers did not want to point it directly at his faults, because he was ordered to paint it as a picture to give it, so that he was ashamed of himself, and Xi Zai knew that he was safe. ”
The second theory is that Han Xizai was very talented, from a noble family in the north, and in the last year of the Tang Dynasty, his father was killed for committing a crime, and Han Xizai fled to Jiangnan to surrender to the Southern Tang, and was deeply favored by Li Ji, the lord of the Southern Tang. After the later lord Li Yu succeeded to the throne, the threat of the Northern Later Zhou to the Southern Tang was very great, and Li Yu was humiliated and asked for peace, but he was suspicious and framed the officials from the north.
In this environment, in order to protect himself, Han Xizai, who is in a high position, deliberately pretends to be a corrupt and drunken fool who lives a life, so that Lord Li Hou will not suspect that he is a person with political ambitions and seek self-preservation.
Li Yu was still not at ease, and Gu Hongzhong and Zhou Wen, who were waiting for the painting academy, refused to go to Han Xizai's house to explore the reality, and painted everything they saw and showed it to him. Of course, han Xizai, who is wise and foolish, understands their intentions, and performs the form of not asking about current affairs, singing and dancing, and drunkenly dreaming of death. Gu Hongzhong relied on his quick insight and amazing memory to memorize the whole process of Han Xizai's family night banquet, and immediately waved his pen to paint after he returned, and after Li Hou saw this painting, he temporarily let Han Xizai and others go.
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From right to left, the "Night Feast Map" is divided into five scenes, such as "listening to music", "watching dance", "resting", "blowing" and "feasting", which shows the scenes of Han Xizai opening a night feast, singing tricks, and wandering in the wilderness during the Southern Tang Dynasty's lord Li Yu. There is no money in the work, the title of the volume is "Night Feast Map", the writer is Cheng Nanyun, who participated in the compilation of the "Yongle Canon" in the early Ming Dynasty, and the remnant inscribed on the Song Dynasty flower Aya at the front across the water has "Xi Zai Feng Feng Qing ..." There is an introduction to Han Xi Zai Xingshi in the text, and the title of this volume is set as "Han Xi Zai Night Feast Map".
The characteristics of the times reflected in the composition of "Night Feast" should be divided into two levels.
(1) Composition of screen paintings and bed surround paintings
The analysis of the characteristics of the era of screen paintings and bed surround paintings in "Night Feast Diagram" is the focus of the analysis of each family, because there are many landscape paintings in them, which provides a basis for breaking the generation in its composition style.
Mr. Xu Bangda believes that the landscape painting on the screen is close to the composition of the Southern Song Dynasty, but it has never been seen in the five generations, mr. Fu Xinian believes that the bed wall painting is a typical "one corner" and "half-side" composition of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, and it is definitely not the painting style of the five generations, so as to prove that this picture is a facsimile of the middle and late Southern Song Dynasty, not the original work of the Five Dynasties.
Both paintings are in line with the style of Guo Xi of the Northern Song Dynasty, who often makes pingyuan scenes, and it is completely possible to find the corresponding composition of the work. From the panoramic composition of the Northern Song Dynasty giant barrier to the composition of the southern Song Dynasty, there is a development process, and the composition of the landscape painting in the screen and bed painting of the "Night Feast" reflects an intermediate state.
Mr. Yu Hui used the compositional formula of Mei and Shi Chun of the Southern Song Dynasty Ma Yuan painted on the fan held by the lady in the picture to illustrate that the work was completed in the Southern Song Dynasty, but we can conclude that there was a similar composition in the late Northern Song Dynasty from Song Huizong's "Lamei Mountain Bird Map".
(2) Overall composition
At present, scholars do not analyze the overall composition of the picture much, and the often mentioned "Female Filial Piety Diagram" as an analogy adopts the common poetic partition in the early days in the overall composition, that is, the form of painting corresponding to poetry, which does not have much similarity with "Night Feast Diagram".
The "Night Feast Diagram" uses the screen as a clever interval, and on the images of the Song Dynasty and before seen so far, the works that skillfully connect the segmented scene compositions include the Southern Song Dynasty Mu Yi's "Trick Painting". The composition of "Night Feast" has relatively mature characteristics, and it is based on judging it as a work before five generations, but it is difficult to directly determine whether it is the Northern Song Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty, or directly include the works of the Southern Song Dynasty, which still lacks a basis.
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