655 - Illustration from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, Jieziyuan huazhuan, peony sprig with poem, 19th c.

Illustration from the Mustard Seed Garden Manual, Jieziyuan huazhuan, peony sprig with poem, 19th c. colour woodblock print on paper, inscribed in Chinese and sealed in red upper left, 19th c., double page from an edition of the Mustard Seed Garden Manual (Jieziyuan huazhuan) on Chinese ink painting, depiction of a flowering branch of peony with a large double bloom in outline and grey-toned leaves, upper left a poem on the peony in two columns, condition commensurate with age, creased, losses in the image, image 22x28.5 cm (HxW), mount, framed under glass, overall size 54x44 cm (HxW) The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, Chinese Jieziyuan huazhuan, is named after the estate of its patron Shen Xinyou and was edited by Wang Gai and his brothers. The first part on landscape painting appeared in 1679 with a preface by Li Yu; parts two and three on plants, flowers, insects and birds followed in 1701. The work is regarded as an early example of colour woodblock printing and was reprinted again and again in China and Japan; in Japan it was a textbook of Nanga painting, and Chinese painters such as Qi Baishi also began their training with it. In China the peony is regarded as the “king of flowers” and bears the honorific name guose tianxiang, “beauty of the nation and fragrance of heaven”, to which the poem on this sheet also alludes.