The origin of new year pictures

Every Spring Festival, people like to buy some bright and pleasing New Year pictures and stick them on doors or indoors to add a peaceful atmosphere to the Spring Festival. Posting New Year pictures during the Spring Festival has a long history in China. New Year pictures, called "door paintings" in ancient times, were originally called "door paintings". According to Custom Yi Tong, in the pre-Qin and Han Dynasties, there was a custom of worshipping the door in religious belief, so Shen Tu and Lei Yu became the earliest gods in China. The Jin Dynasty Zonggu's Chronicle of Jingchu said: "On the first day of the first month, Er Shen attached a household, with Shen Tu on the left and the base on the right, commonly known as the door god."

Cai Lun invented paper in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Before the Tang Dynasty, most of them were hand-painted door gods. The role of goalkeeper is not a legendary image, but a real person. People generally say that the white-faced general in the door gods is Qin from Licheng (now Jinan, Shandong), and the black-faced general is Hu Jingde from Shuozhou (now Shuoxian, Shanxi). Li Shimin Biography records that during the reign of Emperor Taizong, Li Shimin suffered from nightmares. Every night, he hears ghosts screaming, which makes him uneasy and uneasy. A minister said, "sending a general to guard the door will definitely drive away ghosts." General Qin,, volunteered, armed to the teeth, holding a sword in one hand and a whip in the other, standing on both sides of the palace gate and guarding it all night. Taizong's illness has really recovered. Emperor Taizong was overjoyed, but opening the door to the generals was not a long-term policy. The painter was ordered to paint the mighty images of the two generals on the palace gate, and later generations followed suit, painting them on paper or carving them on boards. Because Qin and Weichi Gong were both generals, the door gods in the Tang Dynasty mostly appeared as mighty generals. In addition, folk painters have artistically processed their images on the basis of the legends of Tang history, so they have gradually evolved into the "door gods" of New Year pictures.

At the end of Sui Dynasty, with the appearance of woodcut books, woodcut New Year pictures came into being. In painting, Liu Yan's "Teenagers Play, Play, Play" in the Liang Dynasty is the first New Year picture. During the Tang and Five Dynasties, there were many paintings, including Han Yun's Feng Rentu, Zhou Fang's Youchun Ladies, Butterfly Catching, Yi Qingzhi's Lantern Festival, Xu Xi's Peony and Su Hanchen's Baby Bathing. Especially in the "Baby Bath Map", the baby in the picture is naked and red-bellied, playing and dancing by the flowers, which is colorful and lifelike. This proves that the composition and color of New Year pictures in Tang Dynasty have reached a considerable level.

In the Song Dynasty, woodcuts replaced portraits. The earliest woodcut New Year pictures in China were found in the woodcut New Year pictures in the Southern Song Dynasty, including photos of beautiful women such as Zhao, Wang Zhaojun, Ban Ji and Lvzhu, as well as photos of Hu. There are Shou Xingtu, Eight Immortals, Song He Yannian, etc. In the New Year pictures of the Yuan Dynasty, there were also markets for sale. In the Ming Dynasty, this custom was further developed due to Zhu Yuanzhang's advocacy. In the Qing Dynasty, due to the rise of China's traditional drama, Xiu Xiang's novels and illustrations, as well as the great development of painting and sculpture technology, woodblock New Year pictures entered a peak period. Especially during the reign of Yongzheng and Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, New Year pictures became more prosperous, with producing areas all over the country, and a large number of professional painters and sculptors specializing in woodcut New Year pictures emerged.

Before and after the Revolution of 1911, New Year pictures were not only not developed as they should be, but received a cold reception. The main reason is the influence of the war. During this period, the lithograph New Year pictures represented by Shanghai Old Moon swept the country, forming a unique "Old Moon" style, and a large number of famous Cantonese artists such as Zhou Muqiao, Jin Meisheng, Hang Mianying, Hu, Zheng and Ye emerged.

During the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period, many excellent New Year pictures were produced in the liberated areas, mainly focusing on anti-Japanese and working people, such as joining the army, joining the army in the New Year, and opening up land for brothers and sisters. After the founding of New China, the art of New Year pictures developed rapidly. No matter the shape layout or sentimental implication, it has both inheritance and development, and has created many excellent works to promote new morality, new ideas and new life.

For more than a thousand years, folk artists have been handed down from generation to generation. Under extremely poor conditions, they created a batch of woodblock New Year pictures with strong ethnic customs and unique charm, and gradually formed Taohuawu in Suzhou, Jiangsu, Yangliuqing in Tianjin, Yangjiabu in Huaifang, Shandong, Fengxiang in Shaanxi, Zhuxian Town in Kaifeng, Henan, Tantou in Shaoyang, Sichuan, Foshan in Guangdong, Zhangzhou in Fujian, Linfen in Shanxi and Wuqiang in Hebei. New Year pictures in these areas were quite large during the Yongzheng and Qianlong periods of the Qing Dynasty. Most of their works have simple lines and bright colors, which are integrated into the new theme of reform and opening up and pay attention to the performance of plot, interest and modeling. The figures are lifelike, which makes the work unique and has ornamental and collection value.