Qingming Shang he Due [Along the River During the Quigming Festival]

Np/nd. Quarto. The National Library of Australia estimates the large accordion style Chinese classic printed on gold silk was issued between 1912 and 1926 and suggests it came from Japan. The online copy of this issue is noted as exceptionally scarce and is available for viewing from their website #6333308. Our copy usually has the stamped in red letters below the image instead of over it as is evidenced in their online version. Very rare with most of the reprints online having been issued after 2009. Certainly, the original, which is the National Palace Museum in Beijing, PRC exists in an almost prefect copy with most of the original details intact. It was issued as a scroll and is usually displayed in a glass case though the original would have been viewed one section at a time, beginning from the right end. Most of the scholarship presupposes that the city depicted in the scroll is the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng thus the Bian River would be the one presented here. However, Valerie Hansen of Yale University has argued that the scroll is a depiction of an idealized city rather than a specific city of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). A very nice copy bound in a dark brown silk brocade cloth, decorative paper label, no tears, names or bookplates.