Human desire is like a crocodile, it will expand rapidly if it is not controlled

Lady of the Guo State on a Spring Excursion: Moments of Life of the Beauties of the Tang Dynasty

By Huang Xiaofeng

Henan Fine Arts Publishing House 2023-4

This book is an art history scholar Huang Xiaofeng's review of the famous painting of Lady Guo State on a Spring excursion. Starting from the historical and literary images of Lady of the Guo State, through the formation of the title of the painting and the collection of the painting, readers are led to interpret the historical details contained in this work.

The author focuses on interpreting the many mysteries shrouded in this work from both artistic and historical aspects, for example, who is "Lady of the Guo State"? What is the relationship between her and Lady of the Guo State on a Spring Excursion? Whose work is this? The author pointed out that the lady of Guo State was not a court woman, nor did she live in the palace, but a "foreign destiny woman" of the highest rank. It would have been strange for the court painter Zhang Xuan to have been instructed to paint her travels. It's easy to think about it from another perspective. In the late Tang Dynasty, Madame Guo had become an abstract symbol of the beauty of the Tang Dynasty, a symbol of the court of Xuanzong and even the tragedy of the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, the "traveling picture of women in Guo State" recorded by Zhang Yanyuan cannot be ruled out as the tracing and imagination of the middle and late Tang Dynasty.