On the Composition Art of Building Images in Drawing of Forty Scenes in the Old Summer Palace

The Drawing of Forty Scenes in the Old Summer Palace depicts the most famous garden landscapes of the Old Summer Palace at that time, including different styles of pavilions, corridors, bridges, mountains and trees, rivers and clouds, etc. It is a perfect picture scroll of landscapes by gifted painters. This paper focuses on the composition art of building images in the drawing, generalizes the ways of using building images, and analyzes the key roles of them. This paper also illustrates the approaches of composition from different aspects, i. e. , the dominant dynamic composition, the recessive dynamic composition, the open parallel composition, and the closed-surrounding composition. Through the analysis, it finds that the tangible or intangible vivid curve lines between the building images are integrated smoothly into landscapes, trees, and clouds in various ways, so that each scene of the forty drawings is beautiful and natural. In conclusion, the ingenious composition of building images is one of the most important factors for the success of Drawing of Forty Scenes in the Old Summer Palace.