Nianhua: Chinese Popular Pictures in the Hermitage

On 23 December, 2003, the Hermitage Eastern Department presented its new exhibition in the Small Hermitage’s Peter Gallery (rooms No. 255-257).

Containing five thousand nianhua pictures, the Hermitage collection is an heir to the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (1936), and the collections of the outstanding Russian orientalist Academician V.M. Alekseyev, who traveled to China in 1906-09, 1912 and 1926, and the Russian sinologists B.I. Pankratov and
V.S. Starikov.

Over two hundred nianhua pictures are divided into New Year, theater, history, genre scenes and icons sections.

Nianhua are "New Year" icons and "paper symbols", which express seasons greetings in an hieroglyphic form. They were usually produced on the eve of the lunar New Year — the most important Chinese festival. The tradition of New Year’s home decoration is very ancient. Popular pictures have always been loved by the Chinese. When xylography was invented in China in the 8th century, printed pictures began to be produced. Their techniques and subjects are various, including episodes from literature, theater, myths and legends. Another group includes pictures which reproduce the conventional form of plays and the manner of performance practiced by actors of the popular Peking musical drama. Nianhua pictures of landscapes are very rare. 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. Nianhua pictures are very colorful, because they were intended to decorate people’s homes.

Slaviya published a full-color illustrated catalogue authored by the exhibition’s curators M.L. Rudova (Pchelina), Chief Research Assistant of the East Department, and N.G. Pchelin, Junior Research Assistant of the East Department.

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