Making a Canonical Work: a Cultural History of the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, 1679-1949

Abstract

Abstract As the most widely-used painting manual in China, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (Jieziyuan huazhuan 芥子園畫傳, hereafter Mustard Seed) has long been considered to have been a handbook for beginners. This article problematizes this relatively fixed notion by examining different editions of the manual and argues that the pedagogical function that most people take for granted is an anachronistic construction. In fact, the woodblock-printed Mustard Seed was regarded as an illegitimate painting manual in the mainstream art scene after its publication because it used woodblock printing to convey painting techniques. The canonization of the manual started in the late Qing (1862-1911), as a result of the availability of affordable lithographic editions. It soon became a primer for many would-be painters and gradually entered art schools in the Republican period (1912-1949), changing the traditional pedagogies of painting education. While highlighting the multivalent social functions of Mustard Seed, this paper will also show how changes in printing technique are connected to Mustard Seed’s canonization.