| A ten-leaf album of figure drawing illustrating traditional stories,which attributes to Qiu Ying,is collected in the Palace Museum.Many scholars consider this album as a representative of historical paintings and even as the standard piece of Qiu Ying’s works.However,they did not pay much attention to the general facts,the motifs and authenticity of the album.Ellen Johnston Laing mentioned this album in his essay – “Qiu Ying’s Delicate style”.The conclusion of the forgery was unreliable which was given under his observation of the imperfect painting skill,however,without comparing to Qiu Ying’s other paintings.Laing’s essay also points out Pei Jingfu’s record of this album.Unfortunately,Laing did not notice that the title of some leaves in Pei’s record was different with those on labels of the original works.Moreover,He did not mention exact motif of each leaf.My thesis reconsiders the motif of the ten paintings.The figures that appears in the album had shared similarity with Qiu Ying’s other paintings.After comparison,there is a huge gap between them in terms of drawing skills.Thus,leads to the hesitation of the authenticity and classification of this album.Therefore,the thesis will shed light upon “Suzhou Pian”and different rank of copies of paintings by Qiu Ying.In the late Ming Dynasty,there are professional painters of different level in the market of calligraphy and paintings,including Qiu Ying who was rooted in the literati circle and the anonymous painter who copies and fake famous paintings.This paper will take the relationship between patrons and painters under the western renaissance tradition as a reference in consider Qiu Ying’s relationships with his patrons and by looking into the prints of Yan Yi Bian to explore the ways of painting of professional painters represented by Qiu Ying in Ming Dynasty and their relationship with sponsors. |
