Hundred Flowers Scroll

The Hundred Flowers Scroll is a paper handscroll of ink flowers from the Southern Song dynasty, now in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing. Measuring 31.5 cm in height and 1679.5 cm in length—nearly 17 meters—it presents over fifty species of seasonal flowers in the "broken-branch" manner, beginning with plum blossom at the opening and proceeding through camellia, peony, lily, herbaceous peony, crabapple, daylily, flowering peach, pear blossom, dianthus, poppy, gardenia, orchid, lotus, double lotus, cockscomb, smartweed, hibiscus, osmanthus, chrysanthemum, morning glory, balsam, hollyhock, and sunflower, among others. Birds, dragonflies, butterflies, bees, grasshoppers, fish, and frogs animate the spaces between the blooms. Executed entirely in ink, the scroll combines plain outline, outlined forms filled with ink wash, and boneless washes, using ink in place of color. The brushwork is fine and controlled yet never stiff, producing a limpid, elegant appearance that breaks with the intricate, rigid conventions of academy flower-and-bird painting. The work exercised a profound influence on the ink flower paintings of Qian Xuan and Wang Yuan in the Yuan dynasty and on later literati ink flower painting. The endpaper bears collectors' seals including "Tangcun" and "Jiaolin Liang shi shuhua zhi yin," along with appreciation seals of the Qianlong, Jiaqing, and Xuantong emperors and numerous Qing imperial collection seals; the scroll is recorded in the Shiqu Baoji. It carries no signature or seal of its maker. A colophon by Zhu Zhigui, Prince of Sancheng, of the Ming dynasty, surmises that it was painted by Yang Jieyu of the Southern Song; other research holds that it was commissioned by Emperor Lizong as a palace birthday gift, with birthday poems serving as the painting's themes. This volume, part of the series Selected Chinese Paintings through the Dynasties: Handscrolls, reproduces this celebrated work in handscroll form for the study and enjoyment of readers and researchers.