Selection of Su Shi's Calligraphy - Selections of Calligraphy by Famous Artists Throughout the Ages (15)

Author: Sun Baowen
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The Wen Fu (Rhapsody on Literature), written by the Western Jin Dynasty litterateur Lu Ji, is a systematic treatise on literary creation in the form of a fu. This text is a complete and systematic theory of literary creation in the history of Chinese literary theory. During the early Tang Dynasty, Lu Jianzhi, the nephew of the renowned calligrapher Yu Shennan, wrote the Wen Fu in running script. This ink scroll, on paper, measures 259 mm in height and 355.2 cm in width. It has been passed down through generations of collectors, adorned with numerous inscriptions by famous calligraphers, and is now housed in the Taipei Palace Museum. The famous Yuan Dynasty calligrapher Zhao Mengfu highly praised Lu Jianzhi's calligraphic art and benefited greatly from it. The renowned calligrapher Jie Huishi remarked, "Among Tang Dynasty calligraphy, only this scroll exhibits a powerful structure with the style of the Jin Dynasty."
In the first month of the first year of the Shaoxing era (April 1084), Su Shi, at the age of fifty-nine, was exiled to Lingnan. En route, he was stranded in Xiangyi (now Suixian, Henan) due to rain and wrote the Dongting Spring Color Rhapsody and the Zhongshan Pine Wine Rhapsody to express his sentiments. Together with the postscript, the two rhapsodies and the note comprise over 668 words, making it the longest extant ink scroll in Su Shi's legacy. The Ming Dynasty calligrapher Wang Shizhen remarked, "This work excels not only in antiquity but also in elegance, with a hundred poses yet tight structure, no stroke lacking control—it is the finest from Meishan." The two rhapsodies were once collected by Gu Zhongshi during the Yuan Dynasty, later passed to Li Dongyang and Zhang Xiaosi in the Ming Dynasty, and eventually entered the Qing imperial collection. They were later stored in the Puyi's pseudonymous imperial palace in Changchun during the Qing Dynasty and are now preserved in the Jilin Provincial Museum. This scroll measures 283 mm in height and over 300 cm in width.
The scroll of the Poem on Cold Food at Huangzhou was composed by Su Shi during his exile in Huangzhou in the fifth year of the Yuanfeng era (1082). The scroll contains seventeen lines of Su Shi's handwriting, with characters that grow larger toward the end. The calligraphy is rich and expressive, with unrestrained and dynamic brushwork. It was once hailed as the "Third Greatest Running Script in the World." Postscripts by Huang Tingjian and Dong Qichang are found at the end of the scroll. This ink scroll, now in the Taipei Palace Museum, measures 374 mm in height.