Up the River During Qingming

Of the Qiu Ying attributions for “Up the River During Qingming” in the National Palace Museum, this one is relatively shorter. It begins with scholars in the countryside and continues with a herding scene, the bridal procession, arched bridge and market, city wall and surroundings, and then to the city market and shops, ending abruptly without including the regatta on Lake Jinming. The structure of the scenes in this painting, including the arrangement of figures and presentation of the boats and city walls, is similar to the Guhua 001605 version of “Up the River During Qingming,” suggesting that the two share a common heritage. However, the figures in this scroll are squatter and the lines for the clothing more formulaic. The distant mountains are rendered with ink outlines and then filled with mineral blue and green for emphasis, thereby increasing the beauty of the surface as well. Judging from the use of brush and ink as well as the style, this work appears far removed from Qiu Ying, the colophon in the name of Wen Zhengming dated to “the third month in spring of the Jiajing dingyou year (1537)” also spurious. This would suggest it is one of the profitable “Suzhou fakes” made in the painting workshops at Shantang in Suzhou during the Ming dynasty.