First Part of Story of The Western Chamber
1766
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1766
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
First Part of Story of The Western Chamber is a 1766 by Unknown, a Baroque work, depicting Qianlong Reign, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a busy scene: scholars, servants, and a young woman in a garden, all dressed in bright Qing-dynasty robes. This is the first panel of a long love story printed as a wall scroll. Instead of a single painting, it’s a mass-produced woodblock print—cheap enough for city homes, yet detailed enough to feel like a painting. The colors are flat but bright, like a comic strip from the 1700s. If you like these lively Chinese prints, look up the subject “qing dynasty (1644–1911).”
In the 1600s, printing flourished in such Jiangnan cities as Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Huizhou, evolving from privately enjoyed illustrated books printed in color to more commercialized single-sheet color prints that were hung on walls and became part of the rich urban visual culture.
Woodblock printing in color reached a height in China in the 1600s to 1700s. The prints were executed by means of sets of separate blocks, each carved to print a different color.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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