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Subject:Re: chinese scroll painting ming period?
Posted By: Rat Sat, Jul 01, 2017
Thank you for the additional photos. I can't add much of anything, except that I checked van Gulik, who likewise points to such banners as religious, specifically as an Indian format that arrived in China with the transmission of Buddhism in the 4th/5th century or so, before the Chinese had come up with the typical hanging scroll shown in one of your own banner-type pictures. Paintings on banners were found in Dunhuang, for example. Earlier, pre-Buddhist, Chinese examples survive from Han tombs, the best known example being from Mawangdui and showing mythical and cosmological figures. But none have the surface divided into separate pictorial areas as yours do, as if each banner represented several individual pictures or plaques set into a panel. That's a much more recent form of decoration, perhaps no earlier than Qing.
Bill H's suggestion of an overseas Chinese origin is an interesting possibility, but not one I know enough to comment on.
(The shading done to the garments of some of your figures was present to a more subtle degree in early Chinese figure painting, but that alone doesn't make them early too. The shading might reflect exposure to western art, for example)
These are quite interesting for being unusual though, and worth looking further for answers about. Please come back and share whatever you are able to learn about them, I'd be interested to hear it. Sorry not to be of more help.
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