Although Liu Yixuan knew that Xiang Zhonghui was malicious, he could not resist his curiosity about the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", because this painting was the reason why he came to the Northern Song Dynasty, and perhaps it was also the key to his departure from the Northern Song Dynasty. Liu Yixuan ran to Junzhou privately, just to see what this painting looked like in the Northern Song Dynasty, so as to determine whether the collection of the Palace Museum was the original, which was also an unfulfilled wish that his grandfather had fulfilled. However, Xiang Zhonghui was very cautious about this matter and refused to let Liu Yixuan look at the painting. He even blocked the news, not wanting more people from the outside to know the whereabouts of the painting.

Xiang Zhonghui took Liu Yixuan and Ling'er to the inner room of the study, and asked the butler Kong Laisheng to greet him. He turned the grille and pulled up a curtain to go into the secret room.

"Please wait here, our master will pick up the paintings and will come out soon." Kong Laisheng said while pouring tea for Liu Yixuan and Ling'er. After pouring the tea, he made a few words with Liu Yixuan, and dared not ask any other questions.

Liu Yixuan looked at Kong Laisheng and felt that he was also a loyal slave. Xiang Zhonghui had always liked to collect, and various porcelain calligraphy and paintings filled the entire house. Liu Yixuan stood up and looked at the wall of the study. Most of the calligraphy and paintings hung on the wall were works of famous masters of the Northern Song Dynasty at that time. Xiang Zhonghui was a prince and often had contacts with literati. It was naturally not uncommon for his study to have several works by famous contemporary masters. But Liu Yixuan knew that for any collector, the ones that could be placed outside for guests to appreciate were often not high-quality products. This study room must have a secret room, and the collections in the secret room were the owner's favorite.

Liu Yixuan came to ask Kong Laisheng: "Butler Kong, how many children do you old prince have?"

Kong Laisheng didn't know what Liu Yixuan meant, so he just thought he was chatting, so he smiled and replied: "Our old prince has two young masters and a princess. Now the prince is married, and the eldest prince and the second prince have both got married. The second prince was transferred to King Kang's tent half a month ago to Shandong. Only the eldest prince is still with the prince and serves as the garrison of Junzhou."

"Oh, to be honest, I just came back from King Kang, and I have seen your second son, and I think others are not bad."

Kong Laisheng asked again: "I heard that the wars in Shandong were very fierce, and the Jin soldiers went south like a staggering force. Could it be that the Jin people really want to destroy our Song Dynasty?"

Liu Yixuan saw some concerns in Kong Laisheng's eyes, because as a steward in the county prince's mansion, he had no need to care about the war ahead, but now their second son has gone to the battlefield, and the Song army has suffered repeated losses on the front line, which has made more ordinary people of the Song Dynasty begin to care about the fate of the country. Liu Yixuan was about to talk about the current situation with Kong Laisheng, but the old prince Xiang Zhonghui opened the curtain from behind the grille with a painting scroll in his hand. When Kong Laisheng saw that his master was coming, he stood up to serve and left the idle chapter just now.

"Young Master Liu, this is the painting you have always wanted to see." Xiang Zhonghui took out the long scroll with a little mysterious mystery, and then took everyone to the side of the study, spread a clean and tidy tablecloth on the desk, and asked the butler to close the door and the window, and then gently opened the scroll.

The scroll, which is more than five meters long, has a diameter of four or five inches. It was slowly opened from the beginning to the end by Xiang Zhonghui. After skipping the white silk that is more than one foot long at the beginning of the scroll, Liu Yixuan saw the beginning of the picture. "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" is a long scroll of landscapes. The appreciation of the long scroll is often not to completely unfold the picture, because the size of the scroll is too long and there is not so much space to fully unfold. Therefore, when appreciating the scroll, you will open the picture while rolling up the seen parts. The whole process is like looking at a diorama or a revolving lantern.

In ancient Chinese landscape scrolls, most of the scattered perspective composition method were used, which was very different from the focal perspective method of Western oil paintings. The characteristic of the scattered perspective composition method is that when creating, the painter does not need to stay in a fixed place to observe, nor is it limited by the perspective. Instead, he moves his foothold to observe according to needs. Everything you see on different footholds can be organized into his own picture. It is precisely because of this composition method that Chinese landscape paintings can show the vast realm of "a thousand miles apart". At the same time, for viewers, it is easy to feel the world in the author's eyes from the perspective of the author when he was creating.

The prince of Junzhou, Xiang Zhonghui, slowly opened the scroll of the painting at this time, while his housekeeper Kong Laisheng was only responsible for rolling up the part he had seen at one end. Liu Yixuan and Ling'er surrounded Xiang Zhonghui and carefully watched this famous landscape painting.

The long scroll of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" can be divided into suburban scenery, with three parts: the scene of the Bian River and the street market in the city. The beginning of the scroll is the scenery outside the suburbs of Bianliang City. Liu Yixuan leaned over and observed the picture carefully, but found that the long scroll was very different from the one seen at the Palace Museum. First of all, in the color of the picture, the painting in front of him is obviously bright in color. The distant mountains and dark water flows green in the painting, goose yellow willow branches flying in the wind, the green seedlings in the wheat fields are clearly visible, and even the green tiles on the street houses are brand new ink. It is obviously a painting that has just been completed without the vicissitudes of time.

Secondly, in the inscription, the beginning of this painting does contain five big characters "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", and it is written in thin gold style. However, Liu Yixuan did not see the small seal of Song Huizong's dragon head, nor did he see the signature of Song Huizong's "one person in the world". The third is the damage at the beginning of the picture that Liu Yixuan was most concerned about. Liu Yixuan carefully found the village outside the city in the painting, and then found the thick willow tree by the river. On the country road next to the willow tree, he indeed saw two pedestrians leading horses, and one of them only exposed his head but not his body. This is exactly in line with the work circulating in later generations.

However, the more carefully Liu Yixuan looked at the scroll, the more strange it felt. From the perspective of color, the painting was completed in the second year of Xuanhe, six years since the first year of Jingkang. However, the painting in front of him looked too bright and the texture of the rice paper used for painting was clear and white, as if it had just been painted. Although Liu Yixuan was not a native of Chinese painting, he also knew that once the ink color was immersed in rice paper, it would seep into the texture of rice paper over time, which would be somewhat subtle different from the paintings just completed.

Let’s talk about the inscription on the painting. It is said that when Zhang Zeduan presented this painting to Huizong, Huizong not only wrote the words on the painting, but also stamped his own small seal on the Double Dragon. However, the seal of Huizong was not seen in this painting. Liu Yixuan looked carefully at the five inscriptions written in gold. Although the writing style and font structure were in line with the characteristics of Song Huizong, if you look closely, you can still see a shallow circle of outlines around the font strokes. From these two points, Liu Yixuan judged that the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" in front of him should be a high-quality copy.

"Copying" and "copying" are both process of imitating the original work. Copying means writing or painting according to the original work, but the degree of similarity to the original work is not high. However, imitation is a complex and fine process. When copying, first spreading on the original work with thin paper, and then outlining it with extremely thin line pens according to the handwriting or shape of the original work. After outlining the image outline in the original work, coloring it compared to the original work. The similarity between the works imitated in this way is extremely high enough to be fake and real, and most copies can retain the original writer's writing or painting style, which can almost be regarded as the original work.

Although the copy is a copy, it is also a process of re-creation. High-quality copy can still reach a high level of artistic value. For example, the "Preface to the Lanting Collection" by Wang Xizhi in the collection of the Palace Museum in Taipei is not an original copy of Wang Xizhi, but it is a copy of the Tang people. Its similarity can be regarded as the same as the original copy and has been regarded as a divine work by collectors. Before the original copy appeared, this Tang Dynasty copy of "Preface to the Lanting Collection" was still regarded as the pinnacle of Wang Xizhi's calligraphy works and is also the treasure of the Taipei Palace Museum.

Liu Yixuan stared at the painting in front of him and pondered for a long time. He didn't know what Xiang Zhonghui meant. "What does this old man mean? It would be fine if he didn't want to show me the original one, why did he have to take out a fake painting for me to see? Are you testing me again?"

Liu Yixuan looked at the old prince Xiang Zhonghui who was standing aside and staring at him. He had kind-hearted eyes and a smile on his face. Xiang Zhonghui narrowed his eyes and asked, "How is Mr. Liu? Do you think this painting is the original work of Mr. Zhang, a painter in the Hanlin Academy?"

Liu Yixuan did not answer, Ling'er fell beside her and nodded, interrupted and said, "Well, I think it seems to be true! The painting I saw in my father's study back then should be this one!"

"The princess is so eye-catching. What the Supreme Emperor gave me back then was the long scroll of landscape in front of me!" As he said, he looked at Liu Yixuan's reaction. Liu Yixuan just pretended not to listen to their speech, but looked down at the characters and street market scenes on the picture. Seeing that Liu Yixuan was not expressing his opinion for a long time, Xiang Zhonghui asked again: "Young Master Liu, how are you looking at the authenticity of this painting?"

Liu Yixuan then turned around and hurriedly said, "Old Master is kidding, right? This painting was given to you by the Supreme Emperor, how can it be fake? Even though it seems that this painting is undoubtedly the original one!" He pointed to Huayan and said, "Prince, you see, this painting is long but not redundant, complex but not chaotic, tight and compact, as if it was completed in one go. The scenery taken in the painting, from the distant fields, vast rivers, towering city walls, from the figures in boats and chariots, the furnishings on vendors, and the text signs on the streets, are not lost at all. Such superb techniques must be the hands of the court painter Zhang Zeduan!"
Chapter completed!