Magnificence of the Dream of the Red Chamber – Exhibition of Sun Wen’s Illustration for Dream of the Red Chamber
Dates: 26.1.2018-25.4.2018
Opening hours: 9:00-17:00(closed on Mondays)
Location: The 13th and the 14th exhibition hall, Hebei Museum
Address: 4 Dongda Road, Shijiazhuang, China
Website: official web page
Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, composed by Cao Xueqin in the middle of the 18th century during the Qing Dynasty, is one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels. Being the culmination of Chinese classic literature, it is known as the pinnacle of Chinese fiction and the encyclopedia of the Chinese society.
The picture album of the Dream of the Red Chamber collected in the Museum of Lushun, is composed by Sun Wen, a painter lived in the late Qing Dynasty in Tangshan, Hebei Province, who spent 36 years to complete the 230 illustrations that includes all 120 episodes of the novel, with more than 3,700 figures. The painting technics used by Sun Wen was a mix of the Chinese traditional green-color landscape paintings and Gongbi painting(characterized by fine brushwork, close attention to detail and bright colors), and also inspired by western oil painting, which has delicately presented the landscapes and figures, architectures, plants and flowers and furnitures.
Chapter 53 Ancestral Sacrifice Is Carried Out on New Year’ s Eve in the Ning Mansion An Evening Banquet Is Held on the Feast of Lanterns in the Rong Mansion
(Translated from www.hebeimuseum.org)