Complete Illustrations of Dream of the Red Chamber by Sun Wen
By Sun Wen,Zhou Ruchang,Wang Baosheng  Publisher: Daylight Publishing House
Paper Back
2023-02-01 | ISBN: 978-7-5016-1988-7
Rights Manager: Wang He
Email: whdaylight@126.com
Introduction
Dream of the Red Chamber is an essential classic for understanding Chinese literature and culture. During the Tongzhi to Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty(1862-1908), the painter Sun Wen dedicated his life to creating the Complete Illustrations of Dream of the Red Chamber, a silk-based fine-brushwork color painting. The scale of the work is grand, with each painting measuring approximately 43.3 centimeters in height and 76.5 centimeters in width. The entire collection depicts more than 3,700 characters, with ingenious settings, graceful and gentle beauty, presenting various characters, activities, and stories from the classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber in a coherent pictorial manner. These scenes, rich in poetic imagery and fully embodying the theme of the original work, are detailed in their depiction, meticulous in their brushwork, and grand in scale, showcasing an extremely high-level artistic achievement. It opens a colorful window for readers at home and abroad to understand and study Dream of the Red Chamber as well as the social and cultural context of the Qing Dynasty, and is a treasure of Chinese art. This book has obtained authorization for 16 poems on Dream of the Red Chamber by Mr. Zhou Ruchang, a renowned Chinese scholar, which are interwoven throughout the main plots and classic scenes of the novel. Serving as a preface to the table of contents, these pages enrich the content and add highlights to the book.