Introduction

Family Life and Beliefs in the Figure Paintings Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Figure painting is a major branch of traditional Chinese paintings. It became matured earlier than landscape paintings and bird-and-flower paintings. It was always placed as the forefront type among different types of Chinese ancient paintings in the past dynasties, revealing its importance. “The Classified Records of Ancient Chinese Paintings”(《古画品录》) written by Xie He in the Southern Dynasties says, “painting can render exhortations, and record historical vicissitudes, through which the history of thousands of years can be seen.” In the early stage of Chinese paintings, figure painting played an incomparably important role due to its educational function endowed by its special narrativity. After the Song and Yuan dynasties, scholars’ paintings began to gain their popularity. Meanwhile, when landscape paintings and bird-and-flower paintings became the mainstream, figure paintings were gradually marginalized. In the end, its marginal status was in sharp contrast to the previous glory, and today we even have forgotten the great tradition of figure painting in the history of Chinese painting.

By the Ming and Qing dynasties, though the historical status of figure paintings was no longer prominent, its superb artistry had never fallen into decline. It went on developing and progressing in high standards. Especially as the large amount of scholars of middle and lower classes appeared and the need for expressing family life and beliefs got stronger, paintings of different themes, namely, ancestors paintings that represent order, merry-making paintings that represent internal and external harmony, auspicious paintings that represent sharing between gods and man, extended and permeated into every corner of Chinese traditional society and even into the cultural circle of East Asia, 

As an ancient saying goes, “to cultivate one's moral character and put one's family affairs in order”. Today we “emphasize family, family education and family tradition”, which in fact inherits the core value of the above ancient saying. As we ring out the Old Year and ring in the New Year, on the occasion of celebration and reunion during the Spring Festival, the Hunan Museum, with joint efforts from the Changsha Daguan Culture, dedicatedly presents a special Chinese traditional culture exhibition on “family and country”, displaying 60 figure paintings and related exhibits since the Ming and Qing dynasties. We hope that through this exhibition we can make due contribution to the inheritance of family traditions, to the formation of a better social conduct and ethos, and to the promotion of social harmony as well as the development of our nation and country.