Book Reviews 245
The Night Entertainments of Han Xizai: A Scroll by Gu Hongzhong, by Michael Sullivan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 96 pp. US$45 (Hardcover). ISBN 9780520252097.
In The Night Entertainments of Han Xizai: A Scroll by Gu Hongzhong, Stanford University Professor Emeritus Michael Sullivan explores a single handscroll now in the Palace Museum, Beijing, demonstrating interesting visual and historical aspects of the painting and explaining its compelling beauty.
The slender little book is a pleasure to hold, measuring a mere 23.5 × 17 centimetres, about 5 centimetres shorter than the actual painting. The handscroll is reproduced in full across several pages, with 19 additional details, all illustrated in colour.
Sullivan begins the book with a biography of Han Xizai (b. 902) with an emphasis on his complex relationship to the Southern Tang court and the awkward social position and choices of the last emperor Li Yu (r. 961−975) as he fell from power and grace. Sullivan then explains what is happening in each scene, identifying the names of key figures in the scroll, and pausing to comment on the suggestive glances and gestures that give greater meaning to this representation of a debauched house party. In the following section, “Cultural Clues in the Handscroll,” Sullivan deduces that the space presented must be the main guest hall on Han Xizai’s estate and its furnishings. He points to various objects whose shape and type are common to the Song period (ding or qingbai ceramics, furniture, painted screens, a pipa plectrum) as useful for establishing a date for the scroll. He then touches on the painting’s biography, explaining how the painting likely went from the personal collection of Li Yu to the Song emperor to the Song emperor’s official Su Yijian (958−996) and his family’s famous collection, and from there to Emperor Song Huizong’s (r. 1100−1126) collection.
In a section on “The Artist and His Legacy,” Sullivan briefly discusses notable early paintings that take the Palace Museum version of the Han Xizai scroll as their basis for inspiration. These include a work attributed to Zhou Wenju, Court Concert, in the Art Institute of Chicago, and Night Entertainments of Han Xizai, attributed to Tang Yin in the Sichuan Provincial Museum, Chongqing. In the Epilogue, he continues this thread, demonstrating the enduring interest in the painting and its theme by pointing out twentieth- and twenty-first-century renditions of the topic in various media: Wang Qingsong’s (b. 1966) photomontage
The China Reviews, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 2010)
parody, Night Revels of Lao Li, 2000; Wang Huaiqing’s (b. 1944) oil painting, Night Entertainment -1, 1996; and Guo Wenjing and Zhou Jinzhi’s opera, Night Banquet.
The last major section of the book focuses on the authenticity of the scroll. Sullivan quickly establishes that the painting cannot be original to Gu Hongzhong because of the many representations of Southern Song dress, hairstyles, furniture, and painting, which provide a terminus post quem. He argues that the landscapes painted within the scroll suggest lessons learned from Li Tang, popular in the transitional Song period but not during the Southern Song, (though popular again in the Yuan), and from the Ma-Xia school of the Southern Song. He notes that the earliest seal on the work belongs to collector Shi Miyuan (d. 1233), and that this was a major factor in scholar Yu Hui’s determining a date for the work of c. 1195−1264. Sullivan accepts Yu’s assessment, further noting other Southern Song attributes: each scene is infused with the warm light he finds characteristic of Southern Song painting; the painting represents a night scene, a type of painting especially enjoyed during that time.
Though the text does not participate in more current theoretical debates, this lucidly written book contributes importantly to Anglophone art history because it appears to be the first published in-depth study of the well-known Night Entertainments of Han Xizai scroll in English. For that matter, unlike in the field of European art history, it is one of a very few books in Chinese art historical studies to focus exclusively on a single painting. It is surprising to realize that though this painting has received almost constant scholarly attention over the years, few have written on it at any length. These few include Wu Hung’s commentary on its use of painted screens in The Double Screen (1997), and Osvald Sirén’s notes in Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles (1956). In contrast, the painting has been thoroughly reproduced with transcriptions of all colophons and relevant entries in collector’s catalogues in Chinese in Zhongguo lidai huihua: Gugong Bowuyuan canghuaji (Chinese paintings of successive dynasties: The Collection of the Palace Museum), (1978). In addition, a careful discussion of the scroll and its date is provided in Yu Hui’s article, “Han Xizai yeyan tu juan niandai kao” (On the dating of the handscroll painting The Night Entertainment of Han Xizai), in Gugong Bowuyuan yuankan (1993). While specialists can read the Chinese scholarship, having such a thorough study available in English now makes the painting accessible to a general audience, who will find the book a treasure to peruse. College professors will