Taohuawu New Year's paintings have the characteristics of pictures and texts, diverse themes, and continuous stories. Since the sales of New Year's paintings are concentrated in the lunar month, they are generally based on the theme of expressing the lively scene of joy and harmony and praying for blessings and warding off evil spirits.

Taohuawu New Year paintings are no exception, its main forms are door paintings, middle halls and screen strips, etc., mostly to pray for blessings and welcome auspiciousness, drive away evil spirits, rich in profound meanings.

In terms of subject matter, in addition to the statues of gods shared with other local New Year paintings, Taohuawu New Year paintings often mainly describe urban life and citizen customs, especially landscapes, ladies, literature, opera, and historical stories are the most typical.

For example, the theme of the drama story expresses the people's admiration for heroes, the distinction between good and evil, and the praise of freedom. Doll beauty New Year's paintings mostly use dolls and beauties as the content, reflecting people's yearning for a happy family and a blessed child.

The masterpiece of Taohuawu New Year's paintings, "Gusu Changmentu", is a New Year's painting printed in the 12th year of Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty (1734) by Baohuixuan, a famous New Year's painting shop in Suzhou at that time. It is in the form of a large pair of screens, with a double panorama on the left and right, and the scene is grand.

The New Year's painting adopts a bird's-eye view composition to show people the prosperity of Gusu City in those years. The whole work mainly depicts the bustling and lively streets on the banks of the moat and above the suspension bridge, the busy boats shuttling on the river, the long-stretching walled streets in the distance, the sails, the faint pavilions among the shady green trees, and the towering pagoda of Bao'en Temple. not

Whether it is a block, a boat, or more than 300 characters in the painting, each place is lifelike and vivid, making people feel as if they are in the bustling market and rolling red dust in the area of Gusu Changmen.

Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings with similar themes also include "Gusu Wannian Bridge", only from the fifth year of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1740) to the ninth year of Qianlong (1744) There are three of them, all of which are bird's-eye view compositions, like a vivid three-dimensional, historical picture of the daily life of the city in the south of the Yangtze River.

In addition, most of the themes of New Year's paintings loved by Jiangnan citizens are expressed in multiple consecutive frames, such as "Yang Jiajiang", "The Legend of the West Chamber", "Monkey King's Havoc in the Heavenly Palace", "Dingjun Mountain" and so on.

These illustrated works are closer to the daily life of local citizens, so they have become a popular form of folk art.

Taohuawu New Year's paintings are located in Wu, and they are destined to be inseparable from the blending of Wu culture. In the Taohuawu New Year paintings, there are many works with small bridges and flowing water, white walls and tiles, pillow river people, Suzhou gardens, etc., which are full of the customs and charm of the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River, and have a strong regional and simple and fresh local atmosphere.

Different from the rough and bold and vivid style of the Northern New Year paintings, Taohuawu is influenced by the woodcut prints of Jinling and Huizhou books in the Ming Dynasty, the color is delicate, the style is more elegant, and the picture composition of the New Year paintings is open and far-reaching, with a strong bookish atmosphere and poetic feeling.

It is said that Tang Yin, who was ranked first of the four great talents in Suzhou at the end of the Ming Dynasty, not only lived in the Taohuawu area, the prosperous place of Taohuawu New Year paintings, but also painted New Year's paintings by himself. Although this is only a legend, there is no evidence; However, it can be shown to some extent that Taohuawu New Year paintings are influenced and influenced by the culture of Jiangnan scholars in the art form.

Compared with the New Year paintings in other places, Taohuawu New Year paintings are more delicate and elegant, gentle and delicate, and it is the same as the classical gardens of Suzhou, Kunqu Opera, Suzhou embroidery, Su carving, Su fan, Su note, etc., everywhere reflects the meticulous, refined and elegant style of the water town in the south of the Yangtze River.

Among the traditional folk New Year paintings, the color of Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings is the lightest, and its style is cold and beautiful. It can be said that Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings are the representative of elegance in popular culture. The colors of Taohuawu New Year's paintings are pink, red, yellow, green, purple, and light ink as the basic colors, revealing the beauty of simplicity and elegance in the lively and joyful atmosphere.

Especially at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, Taohuawu New Year paintings used purple on the theme of drama and story, and gradually extended purple to other themes, marking themselves with a more distinctive artistic imprint.

Taohuawu New Year's paintings are mainly overprinted with color plates, one version and one color, the most delicate New Year's paintings even need to use dozens of color plates of different colors to print, it is stronger to call the version to paint, and the more prominent is the flavor of the print, not like the Yangliu Youth Painting, after printing with the plate, there is also a link of painting and mounting.

One side of the water and soil to nurture the other side of the people, will also give birth to a side of culture. The traditional culture of Suzhou has the distinctive characteristics of scholar culture, and has always been unique in its fine and elegant style, which is destined to pursue a plump and balanced artistic style in the composition of Taohuawu New Year paintings.

From the aforementioned "Gusu Gate Picture", it is not difficult to see that the composition of the whole picture is plump but does not make people feel congested. The author seeks a balanced effect in the changes of near and far, but he can still vividly express the prosperity of the Changmen area, which makes people feel stereotypical at all.

Looking at the whole picture, we will feel that it seems to have similarities with Chinese painting, but there are obvious differences.

The "beauty" that Taohuawu New Year paintings attach great importance to is not only manifested in the exquisiteness of the painting, but also in the smooth processing of the lines and the delicacy of the composition.

Taking the well-known "Beauty Flower Arrangement" in Taohuawu New Year's painting as an example, the beauty's care, expectation, coquettishness and anger are all depicted in detail and moving.

Taohuawu New Year's paintings are carved on wooden boards, and they are very particular about the selection of boards. In order to prevent the deformation and cracking of the board, it is generally necessary to choose a board with a hard texture, fine wood grain, smooth and knotless and not easy to crack, and pear wood is often used as an engraving material.

A high-quality Taohuawu New Year's painting is engraved on the online version, which not only emphasizes smooth lines and durability; In addition, special emphasis is placed on being able to reproduce the style of the original manuscript.

Generally speaking, Taohuawu New Year paintings are full of decorative beauty and romanticism, with bright and prominent themes, bright and simple lines, vivid and simple images, and delicate composition and detail performance, it perfectly shows the beauty of the water town in the south of the Yangtze River, bringing the viewer into the intoxicating rain and rain in the south of the Yangtze River.

In that year, in addition to Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui, the sales area of Taohuawu New Year paintings also reached as far as Jiangxi, Hubei, Shandong, Henan and the vast areas of Northeast China. In the Qing Dynasty, every lunar month, Suzhou's Taohuawu and Shantang area will be lively, people carry carts, come from afar, and exchange rice, peanuts, melon seeds and oil for New Year's paintings.

The sale of local New Year paintings is generally divided into three types: painting shops, street vendors and shoulder vendors. It is worth mentioning that shoulder sellers, they carry the New Year's pictures on their backs, go to the villages and towns, and go to a place, a shop of oil and paper, a stall of New Year's paintings, and sing while selling to attract buyers.

These lyrics come from different sources, either ancestral or innovative; The singing tone is also different, some are similar to the minor key of mountain songs, and some are between mountain songs and smooth mouths, and the lyrics are popular and witty, full of fun.

Since the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Taohuawu New Year paintings have been influencing the art and market of New Year paintings in Shanghai, Yangzhou, Nantong, Nanjing and other places.

The above-mentioned areas have followed the example of Suzhou to produce New Year paintings, and many of these dealers have entrusted their drawings to Taohuawu Painting Shop to engrave them on their behalf; Some are engraved and printed on the basis of the Taohuawu New Year paintings, and their styles are similar to the Taohuawu New Year paintings; Others learned the engraving techniques, tools, and pigments of Taohuawu New Year paintings, and set up their own doors in the local area...... Although the art of New Year's paintings in these places integrates local characteristics and creates a new style, it originates from Taohuawu after all.

After the Qing Dynasty Xianfeng and Tongzhi, Taohuawu New Year's paintings once migrated to Shanghai Xiaoxiaochang. Shanghai Xiaoxiaochang is located near the Chenghuang Temple in the old city of Shanghai, and was originally the place where Shanghai County garrisoned military exercises. Since Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, temple fairs have risen and gradually formed a commercial area, and New Year painting dealers have also set up shops along the Chenghuang Temple.

During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Expedition in 1860, some New Year's painting shops in Taohuawu, Suzhou moved here to escape the war. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai's economy developed rapidly and the market was prosperous, and a large number of Suzhou painters and craftsmen were hired here.

Therefore, the Shanghai Xiaoxiaochang New Year paintings should belong to the Taohuawu system, and its development is mainly in the past 50 years from Tongzhi to Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty. In this historical process, it is related to Suzhou Taohuawu New Year's paintings, you have me, I have you. The incense of Taohuawu New Year's paintings eventually continued in his hometown of Suzhou until the founding of New China.

Since the late Ming Dynasty, under the influence of Western missionaries and painters such as Matteo Ricci and Lang Shining, geometric perspective based on positivism began to influence Chinese paintings, which played a great role in understanding Chinese painting and mastering the principles of space. Taohuawu New Year paintings were also influenced by this painting technique.

During the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing Dynasty, some works in Taohuawu New Year paintings appeared "imitation Taixi brushwork" ("Shantang Puji Bridge Map"), "Fataixi brushwork" ("The Whole Book of the West Chamber"), "imitation Atlantic brushwork" ("Lingtai Xingle Tu") and other inscriptions, and the creators of Taohuawu New Year paintings began to produce and express some social customs with Western painting techniques, showing a unique Western taste. The so-called Tessie, in layman's terms, refers to the West.

The use of Taixi's brushwork in Taohuawu New Year's paintings is mainly reflected in three aspects: First, the realistic techniques of Taohuawu New Year's paintings absorb the perspective rules of Western paintings. For example, "Gusu Wannian Bridge" and "Gusu Changmen Map" all use this principle.

The layout of these works is from near to far, from large to small, and the proportions are relatively harmonious, showing the depth and breadth of the spatial hierarchy. Secondly, for the first time, Taohuawu New Year paintings use the knowledge of light and dark light and shadow in a scientific way to break the inherent expression of Chinese New Year paintings.

Many Taohuawu New Year paintings depicting large-scale scenes have uniform lighting in the picture, accurately depicting the light and shadow formed by the light of the object. Thirdly, Taohuawu New Year paintings are also influenced by Western printmaking in terms of plate making.

The ink color of traditional Chinese New Year paintings is only printed once, and there is no secondary printing of dark and light inks. Some of the works of Taohuawu New Year paintings are printed in two editions of ink and shade, and then the colors are applied by hand. This Western-style printmaking technique makes the picture richer and the space more expansive.

Taohuawu New Year painting not only absorbs the essence of Western civilization, but also drifts across the ocean to Japan with merchant ships, influencing the artistic creation of Japanese ukiyo-e, and indirectly influencing European painting art through ukiyo-e.

Among classical Japanese art, ukiyo-e is the most well-known. "Ukiyo" means the ephemeral earthly world. Ukiyo-e is a genre painting developed in the Edo period based on the aesthetic tastes of the Edo burghers, and its development is closely related to the printing industry.

The development of ukiyo-e was mainly carried out in the form of woodblock prints, so when people mention ukiyo-e, they often refer to the form of woodblock prints, among which most of them are carved beauty paintings and landscape paintings.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Taohuawu New Year paintings have been spread to Japan. According to some research, Japanese ukiyo-e has entered a new artistic realm under the influence and inspiration of Taomowu woodblock prints: "Chinese New Year paintings have moved Japanese ukiyo-e printmakers, and the new ideas of ukiyo-e are all based on this." ”

The main influence of Taohuawu New Year paintings on ukiyo-e prints was the use of perspective and chiaroscuro, and became an important "setter" for the introduction of Western painting techniques to Japan in the context of the "eastward expansion of Western painting".

The colors of ukiyo-e were initially similar to those of Taohuawu's New Year paintings, with only a single ink color, and later appeared in red versions, with red as the main color, and yellow and green prints added. This technique of printing prints is influenced by Taohuawu New Year paintings in terms of color, character modeling, composition and other forms.

In ukiyo-e, there are also works that imitate Taohuawu New Year paintings. The similarities between the two also include the form of the series of pictures and the composition of the continuation (several pictures have the same background).

After the Taohuawu New Year paintings were introduced to Japan, they were introduced to Europe through ukiyo-e, which had an important impact on the techniques and styles of late impressionist oil paintings that emerged in Europe in the 19th century.

The pre-condensation perspective, scattered perspective and overlapping perspective in ukiyo-e were used by impressionist painters such as Manet, Monet, and Cézanne in their later paintings, and had a profound influence on Western painting.

In Monet's "Water Lilies" series and Manet's masterpiece "The Pied Piper", we can see the shadow of ukiyo-e. Tracing back to the roots, there are also the merits of Taohuawu New Year's paintings. Like Japanese ukiyo-e, Taohuawu New Year paintings have made an immortal contribution to the progress of world painting art.

During the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, Taohuawu New Year paintings were developed; To the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods, it is more prosperous, and the Tianjin Yangliu Youth Painting is equally famous, and the history is called "South Peach and North Yang".

Under the drastic changes in modern society, Suzhou is not prosperous, and Taohuawu New Year paintings have gradually lost their glory. During the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Suzhou New Year paintings were destroyed by the war and their vitality was greatly damaged. Coupled with the introduction of modern printing technology from the West, a large number of stone carved New Year paintings were dumped, and Taohuawu New Year pictures gradually lost their original urban market and went into decline.

New China was born, and Taohuawu New Year paintings were reborn. In 1956~1959, Taohuawu New Year painting artists tried to print watermark woodcut "Qu Yuan", "Reed Bird" and poems, "1957 Spring Cow" and Chen Laolian's "Water Margin Leaves" and other works, which were well engraved and printed, and the paper and ink were excellent, and were appreciated by Guo Moruo, Fu Baoshi and other cultural masters.

After the reform and opening up, there was another climax in the creation of Taohuawu New Year paintings, and a large number of New Year paintings with novel themes and vivid forms came out one after another, which were well received by the society.

As a traditional handicraft in China, Suzhou Taohuawu woodblock New Year painting is not only a decorative painting art used to beautify the living environment and set off the festive atmosphere, it represents the pursuit of people's good intentions such as avoiding evil spirits and driving away ghosts, driving away disasters and evil spirits, praying for blessings and blessings in the development of civilization for thousands of years, and it is also a continuation and development of traditional civilization.

By chance, I heard from a friend about the renovation of the old city in the Taohuawu area of Suzhou, so I put on my camera and went to find the elegance in Tang Bohu's "Peach Blossom Nunnery Poems". After arriving at Taohuawu Street in Suzhou, it was already a step late, and the surrounding area of Taohuawu had been demolished into ruins, and even the former residence of Tang Bohu had become a ruin.

The peach blossom nunnery was destroyed, the peach blossom fairy has passed away, and the peach tree is nowhere to be seen.

The carved curtain is engraved with two handsome traditional Chinese characters: Pu Yuan. Push open the hidden door, and there are more water pavilions. I was secretly happy in my heart and decided to play this place as a Suzhou garden.

In ancient times, Taohuawu Street was a gathering place for talented people in Suzhou, and Taohuawu New Year paintings were expressed through the folk forms that the literati painted were liked: "A Mass of Harmony" and "Flowers Blooming and Wealthy" were conveyed to pray for blessings and welcome auspiciousness; used to drive away evil spirits and avoid evil spirits, "Shen Tu Yu Lei" and "Zhong Kui Hunting Ghosts"; "Foreign Lantern Beauty" and "Suzhou Train to Wusong", which talk about current affairs and customs; tells the story of opera "Three Laughing Smoke" and "Mu Guiying's Great Breaking the Heavenly Gate......

During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, Taohuawu New Year paintings developed to their peak: the annual output was as high as one million, which was as famous as Tianjin's "Yang Liuqing", and became the two major folk New Year painting centers in the north and south of China. Taohuawu New Year paintings are not only sold all over the country, but also as far as Nanyang and Japan. And to a certain extent, it contributed to the formation of Japanese ukiyo-e. Take a look at the latest chapters of "Dream Claw Book House in the Great Era" and read it for free for the first time.