Handscroll

About Handscroll

A handscroll is a long horizontal painting or piece of calligraphy on paper or silk, mounted and rolled around a wooden rod. The viewer unrolls it on a table from right to left, an arm's width at a time, so the picture unfolds like a journey or a story in time.

Chinese painters exploited that movement. Zhang Zeduan's Along the River During the Qingming Festival (early 12th century) follows a riverside city from quiet countryside to a crowded bridge, and Huang Gongwang's Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (1350) was later split in two by fire. Collectors added seals and colophons, so scrolls gather centuries of responses. In Japan, narrative emaki such as the 12th-century Tale of Genji scrolls alternate text and scenes seen from above through removed roofs. Yun-Fei Ji has painted long scrolls about the people displaced by the Three Gorges Dam.