Study on portrait collection

Portrait painting has specific names in China: portrait, vivid, portrait, portrait, portrait, shadow chase, sketch, portrait, figure, ancestor, Zen founder, top image, instrument image, destiny shadow, western god, debut silk, generation image, white image, emperor image, icon image, costume image, cloud image and small image. The collection of portraits of past dynasties in China is generally divided into two systems: palace collection and folk collection. Folk collections display portraits of ancestors, usually in their own temples, cinemas and living rooms, with the meaning of sacrifice and memory. Generally speaking, the ancestral portraits of the family are the main ones, and the ancestral portraits of his surname or other nationalities are basically not collected. Folk portraits, because they are the remains of ancestors, are like things that younger generations' families pay tribute to and cherish their ancestors. It is difficult for collectors to collect them and not be concerned by collectors. Of course, some portraits of celebrities and Gao Shi are collected and recorded by collectors, but the total number of these portraits is not much, and the proportion in the portraits is also very small. As the mainstream of portrait painting, it is still the portrait of ancestors. With the decline of the family, some ancestors of aristocratic families and everyone eventually scattered and disappeared, or a large number of ancestors were destroyed due to regime change and war, so it is very difficult to truly inherit the ancestors of past dynasties, especially the ancestors of the people. Although the number of portraits created in the past dynasties is very large, the total amount is not much. If they are not collected and recorded by collectors, a large number of folk ancestors will eventually disappear into the dust of history.

In ancient China, collectors and ordinary powerful families basically did not collect portraits. With the decline of the family or the change of the times, many portraits have been destroyed and lost. Since the late Qing Dynasty, many family photos have been lost due to social unrest and war. At the same time, due to the different cultural concepts of western collections, the west has a cultural tradition of attaching importance to body painting and portraits, so it has bought many ancient Chinese portraits, and many exquisite Chinese portrait works have also spread overseas through various channels. In Japan, Europe, America and other countries, museums, art galleries and other public and private collection institutions have a large number of portraits of China in past dynasties, such as Yan's Boston Kings Museum, the King of Huguo Temple in Kyoto, Japan, the Metropolitan Museum of America, the Flier Museum, Yale University, and a large number of portraits of Ming and Qing Dynasties, all of which are scattered portraits of China in past dynasties. Many western art historians have carried out special research on these scattered overseas collections according to the information they have, and many special research papers and monographs have appeared.