Riding the wind of rebirth

"In fact, the Ming Dynasty Code describes it in great detail. Dragon flutes were used in royal Shao music and ceremonials. For example, in the prince's East Palace ceremonials, there were 'two dragon flutes, each made of bamboo, with two ivory tubes, one foot seven inches and five points long, one hole in the front and seven holes in the back, without a bottom, played horizontally, with a golden wooden dragon head attached, and a colorful string hanging from it.'"

"So this should be something that only the royal family can own. Giving this painting to Xie Dongshan is an overstep."

"Then the authenticity of this painting..."

"Based on the seals and inscriptions, I tend to think it is authentic, but there are indeed doubts. The biggest doubt is not the clothes and accessories in the painting that are not in line with the system of the time, because this is a common problem among ancient painters."

"The biggest doubt is that Dai Jin and Shen Zhou have never been found to have such large green and blue works, so it needs to be studied." Zhou Zhi said: "Did Duke Wen Gong say how he found this painting? There is no trace of collection on the painting, and it is badly damaged. It may have been ignored for a long time, and it is not a work that has been handed down in an orderly manner."

"This painting is recorded in Duke Wen Gong's diary. He had a servant in the capital named Li Yuan, who often looked for calligraphy and paintings for Duke Wen Gong from Liulichang. After Duke Wen Gong was dismissed from his post and left the capital, Li Yuan left the Weng Mansion and started a calligraphy and painting business," said Weng Yijun.

"Later, Li Yuan also visited Duke Wen Gong in Changshu. He wrote in his diary: 'My old servant Li Yuan came to visit me across the sea and talked about the affairs of the capital with great emotion... He brought more than ten scrolls of calligraphy and paintings.' Duke Wen Gong bought three of these scrolls of calligraphy and paintings. One of them was the 'Big Scroll of Stone Field', which should be this painting."

Indeed, this painting is 170 cm long and 90 cm wide, undoubtedly a "giant scroll".

This suggests that this painting should be one of the works that Li Yuan brought from Beijing to Jiangnan to sell. In other words, this painting may have been circulated around Beijing for a long time before it entered Weng Tonghe's collection in 1902.

"I still tend to believe it's authentic," Zhou Zhi said. "Compared to coloring, I trust calligraphy and seals more. It's much harder to forge these two things than coloring."

"Ming people usually attributed this type of blue-green landscape to Liu Songnian, but I have never heard of anyone attributed it to Shen Zhou. Therefore, I think it is more likely that Shen Zhou did it for fun, but he unexpectedly coincided with the popular trend in the following decades."

"Or maybe it could be said that there were already some techniques for painting green and blue landscapes at that time, but none of them were up to par. Shen Zhou had seen such techniques and on a whim wanted to give everyone a 'sample'."

"After all, apart from the coloring and the strokes, the rest of the brushwork and artistic conception, especially the characters, are close to the style of Shen Zhou. Add in the calligraphy and seals... I still tend to think it's authentic."

"And judging from the silk used in the painting, this painting is undoubtedly in the style of the Ming Dynasty," Zhou Zhi said with a smile. "In fact, what we are saying is redundant. Now we have the latest protein molecular clock identification method. This painting is on silk, so it can be identified using a molecular clock. Once the results come out, the authenticity will be immediately clear."

"Then I'll leave it to you." Weng Wange acted like a hands-off boss: "Or go to the blog and tell me the result in the end."

Zhou Zhi couldn't help but admire him greatly. With his Pixiu personality, it was impossible for him to learn such a mentality as Weng Wange.

The third painting is Wang Yuanqi's "Poetic Picture of Du Fu".

When Zhou Zhi saw the painting, he smiled slyly and said, "When the painting arrives in Shanghai, I will definitely let Mr. Xu take a good look at it."

"Bongda? Does he have a special liking for Wang Yuanqi?" Weng Wange asked with interest.

"With your friendship with Mr. Xu, how could you not know?" Zhou Zhi said with a smile, "When Mr. Xu was 18 years old, he found a painting by Wang Yuanqi in Liulichang. He thought it was an authentic one and spent 20 taels of gold on it. But when a colleague saw it, he found out it was a fake."

"Before this, Mr. Xu was just an art enthusiast. After this incident, he worked hard, devoted himself to research, and finally became a master in the appreciation, collection and restoration of Chinese calligraphy and paintings." "Oh, there is such a thing?" Weng Wange was immediately happy: "Then I will call him later and tell him that you are going to bring a painting to the Shanghai Museum so that he can take a good look at it, hahaha..."

This painting is another work that fills the gap in the research on Wang Yuanqi. Wang Yuanqi has a unique position among the green landscape painters of the Qing Dynasty. Together with Wang Shimin, Wang Jian and Wang Hui, they are known as the "Four Wangs".

During the Qianlong period, there was a famous landscape painter named Fang Shishu. His landscape paintings were extremely exquisite. People at that time only evaluated him as "the best after Wang Yuanqi", which shows Wang Yuanqi's status in the painting world.

However, this "Poetic Picture of Du Fu" is a green landscape painting that Wang Yuanqi painted for his colleagues while serving as a court painter in Beijing. It is extremely rare. Only one such green landscape painting is collected by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in the United States, and its size is much smaller than the one in front of you.

This painting is more than 300 centimeters long and more than 100 centimeters wide, and is also a "giant scroll".

The painting is based on the title's official-script verse by Du Fu, "The sound of thunder suddenly brings rain to thousands of peaks, and the scent of flowers is as rich as the fragrance of lilies."

The poem comes from "Immediate Events" by Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty. It describes the late spring in Wu Gorge in March. Suddenly there was thunder, and all of a sudden it started to rain heavily. Between the sky and the earth, the mountain peaks were shrouded in the rain. The heavy rain suddenly gathered and dispersed, and the fresh air was immediately filled with the fragrance of various flowers.

Therefore, the picture is also high mountains and dangerous waters, thunderstorms and thousands of peaks, white clouds in the sky are moving fast with the wind, reflecting the sunlight, very bright. The trees, flowers and plants on the ground are more fresh and fragrant after the rain.

The composition of the painting emphasizes grandeur, opening and closing of the source, and ups and downs, with changes in slanting, discontinuity, and disappearance, and has a strong sense of form.

"Wang Yuanqi learned the brush and ink techniques from the 'Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty' and also admired Huang Gongwang. His brush strokes were vigorous and powerful, and he called his own brush a 'vajra', which was not an exaggeration," Zhou Zhi said with emotion.

"Has Elbow also studied him?" Guan Shuning has become somewhat desensitized to Zhou Zhi.

"There are many paintings of Wang Yuanqi handed down from generation to generation. Our Shu University Museum has a painting of his called "Summer Mountain", which I restored." Zhou Zhi said, "But it is a light-colored ink painting, and the size is even smaller than most paintings of Wang Yuanqi in museums. It cannot be compared with this one."

"Mr. Weng, as far as I know, this painting is not only a rare blue-green landscape by Wang Yuanqi, but also the largest masterpiece, right?" Zhou Zhi asked, "This fills the gap in domestic research on Wang Yuanqi."

"Yes, from the information currently known, this painting is Wang Yuanqi's largest one."

"Not only that, there is another first." Zhou Zhi pointed to a piece of cursive script next to the fourteen large official script characters "The sound of thunder suddenly brings rain to the thousands of peaks, and the fragrance of flowers is as fragrant as lilies" on the painting: "It should be the painting with the most characters signed by Wang Yuanqi!"

Among the three paintings, "Portrait of Taoist Master in White Ink" is the only surviving work of Liang Kai from the Northern Song Dynasty, "Dongshan Tu by Xie An, a Copy of Dai Wenjin's Painting" is the only large-scale green landscape painting by Shen Zhou from the Ming Dynasty, and "A Scroll of Poems by Du Fu" fills the gap in domestic research on Wang Yuanqi's calligraphy and painting in terms of content, size and style.

I don’t know if Weng Wange had prepared in advance, but all the things he gave were good items that can be called unique pieces.

"After throwing these three big meat buns away, even if I, Zhou Zhi, have committed a huge crime, I should be forgiven by the Shanghai Museum, right?" Zhou Zhi himself didn't know whether to cry or laugh: "If it weren't for the Song edition of "Jiyun", even I would find it difficult to choose between the classics and these three paintings." (End of this chapter)