Exhibition in London

I visit the Admonitions of the Instructress to Court Ladies in British museum as the beginning of the exhibition tour, it was a paint on the silk scroll, and the original one was missed in the history. The one in exhibition was copied in Tang dynasty, and it’s the nearest one to the original painting. This painting was written in many books even the text books recorded this painting.

The admonitions of the instructress to court ladies is an illustrative scroll drawn by Gu Kaizhi in Dongjin Dynasty, according to Zhang Hua’s Female History, including 9 stories about the female that played a heroic role in history such as guarding the emperor when the bears were coming, ammoniated the emperor away from his harem ect. All of the stories told how the ladies of that time behaved virtuously.

The female history write by Zhang Hua was used to warning the empresses and other ladies cause there were two event happened in decades of years. One was the empress Jia used the fool emperor to regency the country. The second was the empress Zhang killed the emperor when there’s no one noticed. After these two events emperors and nobles began to worry about themselves . So Gu Kaizhi drew the image for them to notice their wives when they wanted to break the rules.

Gu Kaizhi drew three famous image for women at that time. The first one was the Nv shi zhen tu, named a admonition of the instructress to court ladies. The second one was called Virtuos woman in history, and the third one was Luo river Nymphs[1].All of these paintings showed the women’s beauty, and also have education significance. His painting was famous for people and lines.[2]Although most of the content was about the feudalistic superstition , it’s a successful painting textbook when people study art history.

After the exhibition I learned that in Dongjin Dynasty, woman won’t paid much attention . And in this period, the image with women gradually increased, people and artists focus on the women’s beauty , women’s charm was shown more and more in painting, imitated the women’s beauty in life.

This is an amazing work that showed the beauty of ladies in ancient time, also is a book that showed the ladies life in that time, and what the ladies should do. The women of that period wasn’t payed on attention by too many artists , but after this art work and this period ,women showed more and more charming and beauty on painting. And its changed a lot when its came to Tang Dynasty. It’s not only a work about how to be gentle and polite to others , also was a text book of that periods women.    

[1] Wang-go Weng/Yang Boda.   The Palace Museum Peking: Treasures of the forbidden city page 147

[2] People’s Education Press, Senior Three History of Ancient Chinese History ,page 64