Blue eucalyptus traveled to Suzhou and was attracted by the Taohuawu New Year paintings.

Taohuawu New Year Painting is a folk woodblock New Year painting in the south of the Yangtze River, which was named after the production of Taohuawu in Suzhou City. It is known as China's five major folk woodblock New Year paintings together with the woodblock prints of Zhuxian Town in Henan, Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Yangjiabu in Weifang, Shandong and Jinzhu in Sichuan.

Taohuawu New Year paintings originated from the engraving and printing process of the Song Dynasty, evolved from the embroidered image map, and developed into a folk art school in the Ming Dynasty.

The printing of Taohuawu New Year's painting is both coloring and color overlay, the composition is symmetrical, plump, the color is gorgeous, often with purple red as the main tone to express the joyful atmosphere, basically all with color production, carving, color and modeling have a fine and elegant folk art style in the Jiangnan region, mainly showing auspicious and festive, folk life, drama stories, flowers, birds, vegetables and fruits and exorcism and other traditional Chinese folk aesthetic content.

The folk painting circle calls it the "Gusu version". On May 20, 2006, the heritage was approved by the State Council to be included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Judging from the cultural relics that have been handed down, woodcut books and woodblock prints were produced at about the same time. At first, woodblock prints were mainly used as illustrations for books, i.e., embroidered elephant paintings.

The woodblock prints were printed separately as New Year paintings, and they did not appear until the Song Dynasty. Suzhou New Year paintings had a complete and unique style at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and were called "Gusu version" New Year paintings at that time.

During the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing Dynasty, the quality and sales of Suzhou New Year paintings were unprecedentedly improved, there were more than 50 New Year painting shops at that time, which were located in the area of Shantang Street outside the Changmen, and some of them were located in the area of Taohuawu Bao'en Temple, with an annual output of more than one million pieces, and there were more than 100,000 pieces when they were young, which were sold in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong and other places, and reached as far as the Nanyang area.

As a result, the fame of Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings spread all over the country, and Tianjin Yangliuqing became the center of the two major folk New Year paintings in the north and south of China.

After the Opium War, printing technologies such as offset plates, copper plates, and lithographs developed, and the so-called "month brand" New Year's pictures were dumped in urban and rural areas, and Taohuawu New Year's pictures were greatly threatened, and the pomp began to decline

In addition, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolutionary Army came to the city of Suzhou, and the local government of the Qing Dynasty fled in a hurry. Although a few families moved in. The area around Changmen and Taohuawu continued to open, but it could no longer be revitalized.

In the early years of Guangxu, some painters transferred to work in the old school field in Shanghai, and the Suzhou New Year painting shop only relied on the old version of the old school paintings handed down from the previous generation or re-engraved the old school paintings in Shanghai to meet the market, and even sold lithographed foreign paintings, while the New Year paintings such as the door god and the stove king became the main commodity.

Suzhou Taohuawu New Year paintings were on the verge of extinction at that time, and it was not until the founding of New China that they were quickly restored.

Before the Anti-Japanese War, most of the artists have changed careers, and there are only 3 New Year's paintings left: Wang Rongxing, Zhu Rongji, and Zhu Ruiji.

In the early 50s of the 20th century, the Suzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles investigated and studied the situation of Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings, and organized the artists scattered among the people. In the climax of cooperation, the only three remaining New Year's painting shops merged to form a cooperative group to print old New Year's pictures for sale.

From the early Qing Dynasty to the Qianlong period, Taohuawu New Year paintings have four prominent characteristics:

First, it is close to the traditional form of painting, and has a high level of artistic achievement. The emergence of citizen consciousness and urban culture makes Suzhou Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings focus on urban customs and landscapes, which are very close to traditional paintings, with elegant styles, and many pictures have poems and inscriptions.

In the management of early paintings, there are even traces of Song Dynasty courtyard paintings, Ming Dynasty boundary paintings and literati paintings, some of which are difficult to distinguish. For example, most of the Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings of this period adopted the traditional composition form of vertical scrolls and albums, such as "Qinqi Calligraphy and Painting", "Adjusting Birds", "Eating Fruits", "Three Babies", "Five Sons Dengke", "The Legend of the White Snake", etc., no matter from the composition, knife technique, it is difficult to see how different from traditional paintings.

Second, after the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, Suzhou's economy was further developed, rich in the world, and the literary style was prosperous, so the Suzhou citizen class naturally asked to reflect their life and aesthetic taste in practical art such as New Year paintings.

The aesthetic taste of these burghers is neither the "great elegance" of the literati nor the "great vulgarity" of the peasants, but the "appreciation of elegance and vulgarity". At this time, Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings are the most refined, the most finely carved, the most complex structure, and the most grand in size are mostly urban landscape paintings, which are full of urban scenery full of civic interest.

It not only depicts a variety of prosperous actual places and lively trade markets, but also intersperses with various activities of people, tirelessly reflecting the social background, humanistic activities and folk life at that time, and is more like a scroll of vivid and intuitive historical paintings.

For example, "Gusu Changmen Map", "Three Hundred and Sixty Lines", "Shantang Puji Bridge" and so on are all works that vividly display the life of the market.

Third, local art is influenced by Western art and boldly borrows from Western art, such as "Suzhou Wannian Bridge", "Tao Zhu Gets Rich", "Ten Views of West Lake", "Shantang Puji Bridge", "Three Hundred and Sixty Lines", "Hundred Sons", "Three Beauties", "Two Compartments" and other works, can be seen to imitate the carving style of Western copper engravings.

Some even inscribed on the picture with the words "imitation of Atlantic brushwork" ("Suzhou Wannian Bridge"), "Fa Tai Xi Painting" ("Hundred Sons"), "Imitation of Taixi Brushwork" ("Shantang Puji Bridge"), "Imitation of Taixi Brushwork" ("West Chamber") and so on.

In addition to the faces of the figures, the characteristics of local painting are still retained in the expression techniques such as clothing patterns, trees and stones, and houses. Some scholars believe that some of these Taohuawu woodblock prints may have been made for export to cater to European audiences.

Fourth, during this period, Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings appeared in many grand masterpieces. They are all three to four feet, or even the whole paper is finely printed. For example, "Suzhou Wannian Bridge", "Mid-Autumn Festival Night Moon Map of Shantang Puji Bridge", "West Lake Scenic Map", "West Lake Palace Map", etc., the width is about one meter high, and the width is more than half a meter.

On such a large scale, it is purely hand-carved and overprinted, and its technical difficulty and fineness of operation are another important manifestation of the prosperity and development of Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings in this period.

From the late Qianlong period to Jiaqing and Daoguang, although the Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings still continue the aesthetic taste of the citizen class, they have shown a declining trend, and the style of the works lacks the previous simplicity and elegance.

In the early Republic of China, due to the rise of advanced printing, Taohuawu New Year paintings have lost the market in the city and are basically oriented to farmers, which is different from the previous "elegant" style and "foreign" style, and is a "vulgar" peasant art. He also created some works depicting the life of the foreign market to attract the attention of the peasants.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Taohuawu New Year paintings received due attention, and artists and artists devoted themselves to the creation of Taohuawu woodblock New Year paintings with full enthusiasm and responsibility.

And with the change of the times, the change of people's lifestyle, the New Year painting is no longer just the function of the past, but it is listed as a work of art for collection, regardless of the form and function under the re-examination of modern aesthetics, have been injected with fresh interpretation, the vitality of Taohuawu New Year painting and the unique charm of traditional folk art, have also been extended here.

Taohuawu woodblock New Year painting has the characteristics of one version and one color, the composition is plump, the shape is exaggerated, the color is bright, the lines are smooth, without losing the elegance, rich in decoration and simplicity, with strong local style and national characteristics.

Its content is rich and takes a wide range of materials, including characters, landscapes, flowers and birds, folklore, as well as drama stories and decorative patterns, etc., and the size and specifications include door paintings, middle halls, banners, bucket squares, etc.

From the early Qing Dynasty to the Qianlong period, it was the heyday of the development of Taohuawu New Year paintings. In the New Year paintings of the Qianlong Dynasty, landscape painting was the mainstream, with the most refined painting method, the finest carving, the most complex structure, and the most grand picture.

The export of New Year's pictures is also very prosperous, especially the largest number of New Year's paintings are sold to Japan, and there are also a large number of New Year's pictures that are re-exported to various parts of the West. In this case, the influence of foreign styles is particularly evident in the form and technique of Suzhou New Year paintings.

Due to the large number of export of New Year paintings, the aesthetic taste of Western customers also provided impetus for the "Westernization" of Suzhou New Year paintings. The craftsmen of New Year paintings did not hesitate to use the methods of "yin and yang" and "far and near" in their works, and even explicitly inscribed "imitation Taixi brushwork" on some works, but they still retain the characteristics of traditional painting in terms of composition, character building, tree and stone and other expression techniques.

However, with the economic depression in the late Qing Dynasty and the continuous internal and external wars, the prosperous Gusu prosperity is gone, the market scale is shrinking day by day, and the export of New Year pictures has gradually stopped.

At that time, the target audience was mainly rural people, and the taste was closer to the countryside, and the content and style also better reflected the life aspirations and appreciation habits of the peasants. Compared with the previous works, the Taohuawu New Year paintings in the later period are obviously much simpler and simpler in terms of ideology and expression, and the subject matter of the work has added a lot of content that reflects rural life.

The picture is mostly full of decorative and exaggerated techniques, and the basic tones are composed of red, pink, yellow, green, purple and light ink in the use of color, which makes the picture more plump and lively, and closer to the laborers, so it is welcomed by the majority of farmers.

Since the lithographic painting became popular, Suzhou Taohuawu once used woodcut reprinting, although it can not be the enemy of lithographs, but with the traditional color of Taohuawu, it also has its unique market. At the same time, Taohuawu New Year's paintings also appropriately absorb the perspective and anatomical knowledge in Western painting, so the distance and proportion of the characters on the picture seem to be very pleasing to the eye.

In the treatment of composition, it is absorbed from reality, so it is real and varied. In the shaping of the characters, most of them were observed and felt by the painters from the real people, so the faces they painted were from the people of the time, and the costumes and background props they painted were also a good reflection of the reality at that time. These artistic characteristics have been inherited and developed in later figure paintings, comic books, and New Year paintings.

On the one hand, Taohuawu New Year paintings inherit the excellent forms of traditional literati painting and folk art, and on the other hand, they continue to absorb artistic elements of Western painting such as perspective and attention to reality.

The open model has made it respond to the situation of different periods and different consumer groups, and has been in constant change. It is precisely because of the trend that Taohuawu New Year's paintings give people a fresh and lively vitality.

The carving tool is mainly a fist knife, shaped like a crescent moon, and is named because it is equipped with a wooden handle and is convenient to hold in the fist. The auxiliary knife has bent chisel, flat chisel, leek edge, needle chisel, root chisel, chisel and so on.

In addition, there is a knock square to be used when knocking the bottom, and the knocking side uses a square hammer made of sandalwood; The oil cotton used to wipe the manuscript paper to show the ink lines, the small brown broom used to brush away the sawdust in the fine seams of the engraving plate, the iron ruler used to carve straight lines, the compass used to carve circles (also known as "the difference in the artist"), the two types of whetstones, and the water bowl.

The color includes ink and color matching, the ink is selected from the high-grade bituminous coal and the batter blend, fermentation and precipitation can only be used after a month, the color of the color matching, the use of glue with water should be appropriate, usually with glue cold days should be less, hot days should be more, the degree of color matching should be "four heavy and two light", that is, red, green, yellow three colors, purple is heavier, peach, light ink should be light, so that the color of the printed New Year painting is bright and bright, and coordinated and symmetrical.

New Year's picture printing paper should use white, thin and tough paper, in the past, Taohuawu woodblock New Year's pictures mostly use "Mao Tai", "white tube", "Benlian History", etc., and later changed to "Yanglian History", that is, white bright paper.

The main tools for printing include: palm broom, brown eraser, ink pad, color basin, glue, paraffin, etc.

The production of Taohuawu New Year paintings can be summarized into three processes: creation, engraving and printing. Individual also need manual coloring, powdering, gold sweeping, silver sweeping and framing procedures, the process is numerous and complex, is a unique handicraft. After the sketch is completed, the engraver pastes the sketch on the pear wood board, which is called "loading".

Generally, the sketch is divided into several parts: line plate and color plate. Then the carver uses the fist knife, according to the line, point, and block on the sketch, and successively uses the techniques of hair, lining, picking, compounding, and ticking, so as to achieve the effect of smooth lines and non-distorted artwork.

Taohuawu New Year paintings have obvious stylistic tendencies in the historical context of their own development; In the early stage, it was the urban culture of the south of the Yangtze River, and in the later stage, it was the modern rural culture.

For example, the early Taohuawu woodblock New Year picture set color printing is relatively small, Yongzheng, Qianlong period of production, to fill in the color, there are two basic ways to fill the color, one is flat coating, the other is halo; There are also those that are overprinted with two types of ink and then colored.

The former is such as "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl", "The Beauty Game" and "The Five Sons Win the Championship", etc., and the latter is such as "Hundred Sons", "Ten Scenes of West Lake" and "Playing Cat".

In the period when it was mainly sold to rural areas, only some of Taohuawu New Year's paintings used the method of blending, such as the face of the door god and some details; The engraving changed to a simple and crude style, with beautiful decorative deformations and exaggerated decorative colors.

At this time, the colors of Taohuawu New Year paintings have a strong contrast, in addition to the three primary colors, most of the bright and bright colors such as purple, red, pink, deep purple and vermilion, full of enthusiasm and vitality, bright and simple. 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.