Nianhua: Chinese Popular Pictures in the Hermitage
23 December, 2003 - February, 2004

The exhibition (rooms N 255-257) shows over two hundred nianhua pictures, divided into New Year, theater, history, genre scenes and icons sections.

The genre of nianhua includes various icons associated with cultic and ritual aspects of New Year celebrations, and the
so-called "paper symbols " expressing New Year's greetings in an enigmatic form. Understanding the puzzle depended on the character of Chinese script, where hieroglyphs may be written differently but be pronounced in the same way. Nianhua pictures were books for the illiterate people, who were acquainted with the country's literature by street story-tellers, theatrical performances and the popular Peking musical drama. Landscape as a separate genre is rare in popular pictures. Images which in a symbolic form express greetings look especially attractive, though their message remains obscure to the uninitiated.

Nianhua in the course of its history evolved from cheap printed icons, which were fabricated by Taoist and Buddhist monasteries in the 5th and 6th centuries, into a popular art taking its final form in the first half of the 19th century. The simple technology of its fabrication was manually painted xylography or color printing. The name of nianhua comes from the name of the Chinese New Year (according to the lunar calendar). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, nianhua was called zuhua (rude painting) in China. On the eve of the New Year celebrations old pictures were destroyed and replaced with new ones.

Some extant artifacts may shed light on the prehistory of nianhua. For example, in the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of prayer icons including images of deities and texts of prayers, printed by the method of xylography, were found in the Mogao Caves, a monastery near the town of Dun Huan. Nianhua's direct prototypes were the "paper pictures " zihua.

As New Year was approaching, images of mengshengs (door spirits) and Zung Kui (averter of evil spirits) were printed and sold in towns. Special centers of nianhua production arose in the early 17th century. The art of Chinese popular picture was encouraged by the technology of color printing invented in the late 16th or early 17th centuries. Both entire compositions and specific details (elements of costumes, architecture, etc.) were executed in this technique. Some Chinese connoisseurs believe that the 18th century was nianhua's golden age. High quality pictures, produced in restricted numbers, were expensive. The genre continued to develop up to the middle of the 19th century, becoming especially widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In nianhua action takes place against the background of a realistic landscape or another specific environment, and characters wear costumes of particular periods.

Wealth and for Many Years, May (Your Son) Alane Seize the Head of Ao
Late 19th - early 20th centuries
Larger view

Lu hai with the Golden Toad
Late 19th - early 20th centuries
Larger view