In the past Julia Murray has tried to redefine the term “narrative illustration” when applied to Chinese pictures. In some of her previous writings she has already argued that the unsuitability of the term arises from the fact that it is borrowed from Western art history to designate a variety of Chinese pictorial subjects in which the only common denominator is the use of figures. Not only are the works that are so classified today not all narratives in the strict sense of the word, but traditionally, in China itself they were never thought of as such. Moreover, even in the West the term narrative is a tricky and ambiguous one. Julia Murray herself has accepted its use for certain forms of Chinese pictures which depict or tell a story centered on a protagonist or protagonists, and that have a social message as their main aim.

Finding a more accurate description for this term was evidently not easy. The kind of story-telling that in her opinion characterizes narrative pictures in Chinese art seems to have much in common with the function fulfilled by novels or films in the West today. She may well be aware that her redefinition of the term invites this kind of comparison, explaining that it is useful mainly to Westerners, who are outsiders looking in on the Chinese tradition of painting. To a Chinese traditionalist this term has little validity.

In Mirrors of Morality , Julia Murray develops her thesis in an introduction and eight chapters, which take the reader from the early narrative illustrations created under the Han period to the late Ming Dynasty, although a few are as recent as 1989. Following her own definition she chooses paintings and prints that tell a story that instills Confucian values. It is their Confucian content, which either reflect Confucian morality or are a direct depiction of the life of Confucius (with the same aim), that perhaps prove more interesting and informative to readers, especially those not entirely familiar with Chinese culture and art. But even for those that are, there are surprising insights, such as the fact discussed in her last chapter, that in such a hierarchical society as that of China during the late Ming period, some educated literati took it upon themselves to circulate narrative prints that, rather democratically, communicated Confucian virtues to ordinary people. Such was the aim of the censor Zhong Huamin, when he commissioned stone rubbings of Ming Taizu's Six Injunctions , for the purpose of sending them for the edification of the people of various districts and provinces.

Briefly, in the first chapter the book introduces the reader to the concept of narrative illustration in China . The following chapters take him on a journey where he or she may view the way narrative has been painted and the didactic social aims it has served. Thus chapter 1 discusses the beginnings of such paintings. Chapter 2 shows the truly revolutionary impact that the introduction of Buddhism from India had on pictures of the post-Han period, which led, among other benefits, to a greater development of the handscroll format. In chapter 4, narrative illustrations from the sixth to the eighth century are considered.

In chapter 5 the author traces the rise of one of the greatest masters of narrative illustration, Li Gonglin ( ca. 1014-1106), during the Northern Song Dynasty. It came at a time when figure painting had fallen out of favour, as scholar-painters turned their attention to nature and to themes derived from nature, such as landscapes, birds and flowers, flowers and bamboo, etc. Li Gonglin, a scholar himself, is the only important painter who managed to gain respect and fame as a figure painter at the time. It was at his skillful hands that scrolls such as the Classics of Filial Piety , the Nine Songs , Returning Home ––a truly remarkable depiction of the poet Tao Yuanming, now in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution––and others, enhanced the genre. What happened to narrative illustration after the Northern Song period, when only the works of literati are usually considered by art historians today, is the subject of chapters 6 and 7, which respectively discuss the continuation of narratives executed for the imperial court and outside it, all with a didactic moral purpose, up to the late Ming period in the seventeenth century.

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