page_title: Hu Zhengyan
section_title: Major works
hierarchical_section_title: Hu Zhengyan / Major works
caption_attribution_description: English: Bamboo in snow from the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy Čeština: Zasněžený bambus, ilustrace z Příručky malířství a kaligrafie Ateliéru u deseti bambusů
context_page_description: Hu Zhengyan was a Chinese artist, printmaker and publisher. He worked in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and seal-carving, but was primarily a publisher, producing academic texts as well as records of his own work.
  Hu lived in Nanjing during the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. A Ming loyalist, he was offered a position at the rump court of the Hongguang Emperor, but declined the post, and never held anything more than minor political office. He did, however, design the Hongguang Emperor's personal seal, and his loyalty to the dynasty was such that he largely retired from society after the emperor's capture and death in 1645. He owned and operated an academic publishing house called the Ten Bamboo Studio, in which he practised various multi-colour printing and embossing techniques, and he employed several members of his family in this enterprise. Hu's work at the Ten Bamboo Studio pioneered new techniques in colour printmaking, leading to delicate gradations of colour which were not previously achievable in this art form.
context_section_description: Hu's most notable work is the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (Shizhuzhai Shuhuapu, 十竹齋書畫譜), an anthology of around 320 prints by around thirty different artists (including Hu himself), published in 1633. It consists of eight sections, covering calligraphy, bamboo, flowers, rocks, birds and animals, plums, orchids and fruit. Some of these sections had been released previously as single volumes. As well as a collection of artworks, it was also intended as an artistic primer, with instructions on correct brush position and technique and several pictures designed for beginners to copy. Although these instructions only appear in the sections on orchids and bamboo, the book still remains the first example of a categorical and analytical approach to Chinese painting. In this book, Hu used his multiple-block printing methods to obtain gradations of colour in the images, rather than obvious outlines or overlaps. The manual is bound in the "butterfly binding" (hudie zhuang, 蝴蝶裝) style, whereby whole-folio illustrations are folded so that each occupies a double-page spread. This binding style allows the reader to lay the book flat in order to look at a particular image. Cambridge University Library released a complete digital scan of the manual, including all writings and illustrations in August, 2015. Said Charles Aylmer, Head of the Cambridge University Chinese Department, "The binding is so fragile, and the manual so delicate, that until it was digitized, we have never been able to let anyone look through it or study it – despite its undoubted importance to scholars."
  This volume went on to influence colour printing across China, where it paved the way for the later but better-known Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden (Jieziyuan Huazhuan 芥子園畫傳), and also in Japan, where it was reprinted and foreshadowed the development in ukiyo-e of the colour woodblock printing process known as nishiki-e (錦絵). The popularity of the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual was such that print runs continued to be produced all the way through to the late Qing dynasty.
  Hu also produced the work Ten Bamboo Studio Letter Paper (Shizhuzhai Jianpu, 十竹齋箋譜), a collection of paper samples, which made use of the gonghua stamped embossing technique to make the illustrations stand out in relief. Whilst primarily a catalogue of decorative writing papers, it also contained paintings of rocks, people, ritual vessels and other subjects. The book was bound in the "wrapped back" (baobei zhuang, 包背裝) style, in which the folio pages are folded, stacked, and sewn along the open edges. Originally published in 1644, it was reissued in four volumes between 1934 and 1941 by Zheng Zhenduo and Lu Xun, and revised and republished again in 1952.
caption: Bamboo in snow from the 'Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting and Calligraphy
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