Mustard seed orchard

Mustard Garden (also called Biography of Mustard Garden) is a classic textbook of traditional painting in China. Some famous painters in modern times, such as Huang, Qi Baishi, Pan Tianshou, Fu Baoshi, etc., used Mustard Seed Garden as a model for their study. Therefore, the book Mustard Garden is very famous. Mustard Seed Garden has been expanding since it was published more than 300 years ago. King Kangxi's An Edition and Guangxu Chaoxun Edition are compulsory books for learning painting all over the world.

"Mustard Garden" is the name of the residential villa of Li Yu, a famous scholar in the early Qing Dynasty. His son-in-law, Shen Jia, has 43 sketches of Ming Dynasty landscape painter Li. So he asked Jiaxing painter Wang Jian to sort out and add 90 sketches to 133, and attached 40 sketches of ancient landscape paintings for beginners to use. At the beginning of the article, a brief introduction to Qing Zaitang's painting was compiled. With the support of Li Yu, it was printed in the 18th year of Kangxi (1680) and published as Mustard Garden. This is the first episode of Mustard Seed Orchard. Then, entrusted by Shen, Wang almost compiled the scores of Mei Ju and Henaan with his elder brother, which led to the second and third episodes. It was the fortieth year of Kangxi (170 1), and it was printed with five-color woodcut paper, which was internationally known as "Wang Jiangben". It was exquisite at that time, but the number of prints was very small, only a few hundred copies could be printed.

"Mustard Seed Garden" was copied again and again and gradually spread. During the Guangxu period (1875- 1909), many people needed this painting, but the original book was worn out and could not be printed because it was reprinted over the years. At that time, there was a painter named Chao Xun, who was also from Jiaxing. He copied the first three episodes, added a batch of paintings by famous Shanghai artists, and at the same time made up an episode of characters (that is, the fourth episode of Mustard Garden). In the 23rd year of Guangxu, there was a printing factory in Shanghai to copy and publish, which was called "facing the training" in history. Although this set of "Mustard Garden" is a black and white edition, it is much richer than the Kangxi edition. Since then, "Mustard Garden" has spread more widely.