Artists › Painters and Calligraphers

Zhang Zeduan

Northern Song painter known only from a Jin-dynasty colophon, the creator of the Qingming Festival on the River handscroll of Kaifeng's suburbs and streets

Also known as Zi Zhengdao

Zhang Zeduan appears in no Song history or painting catalogue; all that is known of him comes from a colophon written in 1186 by Zhang Zhu of the Jin and mounted after the *Qingming Festival on the River* (*Qingming shanghe tu*). It calls him a Hanlin attendant, courtesy name Zhengdao, from Dongwu, and says he studied books as a boy before turning to painting, excelling at ruled-line architecture and especially fond of boats, carts, markets, bridges and roads. Zhang Zhu also cites a catalogue by a Xiang family that ranked two of his scrolls, the *Dragon-Boat Contest on West Lake* and the *Qingming Festival on the River*, in its highest class. The surviving silk handscroll runs from the countryside outside Kaifeng past the Rainbow Bridge to the city gate, showing more than eight hundred figures and over twenty boats. It passed through Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing collections and is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing, while the West Lake scroll is lost.

Life and times

  1. UnknownBornSongpainter of the late Northern Song
  2. 1080Song Commercial & Urban RevolutionTook partDismantling urban ward walls and opening night markets, pioneering the vibrant commercial citizen society.
    1. Qingming Scroll Depicts Kaifeng's Urban Lifec. 1101Zhang Zeduan's handscroll depicts Kaifeng's gates, the Bian River, shops, boats, carts, and urban trades, preserving a visual record of Northern Song city life.
  3. UnknownDied

Works

  1. Treasures · Brushwork1
    1. Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming FestivalNorthern Song dynastyThe bustle of the Song capital in a single scroll

Connections

  1. Shared events2
    1. Zhao Ji1082 CE–1135 CE
    2. Meng YuanlaoDates unknown; ca…