The Unexpected Emergence of Li Bai’s Calligraphy Work
Fu Shen, Famous Appraiser of Calligraphy and Paintings, Released His Latest Research Result:
Recently, Mr. Fu Shen made public his latest research result on “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink”. Mr. Fu Shen, 83, is a famous Chinese art historian, appraiser of calligraphy and paintings, the former director of the Chinese Art Department of Freer Gallery of Art, a steering committee member of Taipei Palace Museum, a concurrent professor of the Institute of Art History of Taiwan University, a visiting professor of Zhejiang University, and an honorary professor of Nanjing University.
Li Bai (701-762 A.D.) was a famous Chinese poet of Tang Dynasty. With the courtesy name of Taibai, as well as the pseudonyms of “Householder of Azure Lotus” and “Banished Transcendent”, he was also regarded as the “Immortal Poet” by later generations. When it comes to Li Bai’s calligraphy works, people are more familiar with the calligraphy scroll “Going upto Sunterrace” collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing. However, in Mr. Fu Shen’s opinion, this calligraphy scroll “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink” by Li Bai, which has been lost overseas for many years, deserves more attention.
“Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink” is a piece of calligraphy work of the Tang Dynasty. It has been lost overseas for many years.the calligraphy scroll is 26.4 cm in length and 67 cm in width in paper. There are 50 characters on the scroll in total, including the whole poem, saying “The ground is white, the wind is cold, and the snowflakes are as big as hands. Your refusal to drink wine in the cup will be laughable for Tao Yuanming.you are unworthy of the music played and the five willows planted. You let down your official title and make me feel that I mean nothing to you.” The work was signed by Li Bai. From the aspect of material, the paper used should be hemp paper produced in Sichuan Province, which was mostly seen in the Tang Dynasty, and writing was done with deer hair brush of the Tang Dynasty, both have distinct characteristics of Tang Dynasty. According to the information from Japanese academic circles, “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink” was inferred to be composed in the twelfth year of Tianbao in Tang Dynasty (753 A.D.) It was once collected in Purple Kwan-yin Temple in Dazaifu-shi, Fukuoka for a long time. During the Edo Period, it became the private collection of Hosokawa Family, the Lord of Kokura Domain. After several twists and turns since Meiji Restoration, the calligraphy scroll was purchased by the Japanese ancient calligraphy collector Asuka Ninhwan and was stored in his library in Kyoto. In the 1980s, upon the request of the Japanese collector, many experts and scholars in the field of ancient Chinese literature and museum, such as Qi Gong, Xie Zhiliu, Shi Zhuqing, Yan Shaodang, Sun Jing and Li Zhizhong had conducted appraisal and research on the work.all of them agreed that “The calligraphic style of this work is unique, with complete form and spirit. All aspects have embodied the characteristics of the Tang Dynasty.the characteristics of the times are obvious, making it an extraordinary calligraphy work by a Tang calligrapher. “After that, due to the outbreak of Japan’s economic crisis, the scroll was once again sold to another collector and faded out of the sight of Chinese scholars. This time, invited by Hong Kong Li Bai Poetry and Calligraphy Research Association, Mr. Fu Shen conducted in-depth research on “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink” for 2 years. According to him, this calligraphy scroll is extremely clean and pure in style. It has the skeleton of Ouyang Xun and Chu Suiliang, and has been somehow influenced by Cao Zijian Stele in Wei Dynasty, as well as the writing styles of Sui and Northern Qi Dynasties. There are fifty characters in total on this calligraphy scroll, which should have been written by Li Bai in a high spirit when he was drinking with Magistrate Wang of Liyang County. The calligraphy is fluent and free. Li Bai
expressed his feelings completely with every dip of the brush in ink.to write this poem, he dipped the brush in ink for six times.the size of each character varies and is unrestricted. Reading this work carefully is as exciting as watching a swordsman practicing a sword. From the characters on the scroll, the talent of Li Bai as a genius and a swordsman of the generation had been explicitly demonstrated, while the unique style of writing is exactly in line with his life as the Immortal Poet, wine immortal and swordsman. through observation, the art of composition of scroll possesses the style of Jin and Tang Dynasties, which is exactly the same as Li Shimin’s “Inscriptions on Jinci Tablet”. When compared with Emperor Wu Zetian’s calligraphy on the Stele of Prince Shengxian, both works, even in their subtle components like lift, press and so on, have all demonstrated common features of the early Tang Dynasty calligraphy style from the writing method to the characteristics.
According to Mr. Fu Shen, in addition to that fact that the art of composition of “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink” possesses the style of Jin and Tang Dynasties, it has also demonstrated the characters of calligraphy written with the short-tipped hard-hair paper-wrapped brush. The phenomenon that “the ink in the center of the stoke is much thicker” is extremely prominent in character “饮” and “肯” in the title of “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink”. It can be seen that such ink lines in the center of the strokes are not the traces of ink concentration caused by the center stroke after the brush was fully dipped in ink. Instead, they are obviously scratches from a hard brush core. this confirms the resumption that the brush used was Jiju brush, a hard-core paper-wrapped brush unique in the Tang Dynasty.and the strokes are strong and firm. this characteristic is consistent with that of ink strokes written with Tang Dynasty hard-core brush collected by Shosoin in Japan. after the appearance of Sanzhuo brush in the late Tang Dynasty, the hard-core paper-wrapped brush became less and less popular, and was rarely seen in Song Dynasty. this once again strongly proves that the style of calligraphy in this particular period was greatly influenced by the brush used, resulting in a writing style that was sharp, clumsy, naive yet natural. After several attempts, Mr. Fu found out that only with the same hard heart brush of Tang Dynasty can one reproduce the original style of the scroll.
Since the calligraphy scroll has not appeared in recent 30 years, Mr. Fu and his research team, with a cautious attitude, also tries to inspect this cultural relic through modern scientific and technological means. Through microscopic observation, it can be seen that the presentation of the ink and paper used for this calligraphy scroll is very similar to that of Volume VI of “Sutra Explaining Undefiled Praise” (about 700 A.D.) and the lower part of the “Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra” from Sui Dynasty to early Tang Dynasty. It can be concluded that the works were created in the same era. Through the carbon-14 test by the Comprehensive Research Institute of Geosciences of Japan Co., Ltd., it has been proved that the production time of the paper used is about 700 A.D. (± 30 years), which is basically consistent with the works of the Tang dynasty recorded in the literature.
After a thorough research on the calligraphy scroll “Taunting Magistrate Wang of Liyang County for Refusing to Drink”, Mr. Fu Shen and his research team have concluded that from the time of paper and ink, the content of the poem, the firm strokes written with Tang brushes, the style of calligraphy, and many other aspects, it can be concluded that the calligraphy scroll is Li Bai’s original work. Associated with “Immortal Poet” Li Bai of Tang Dynasty, the calligraphy scroll is a treasure survived time and space in the long history. It is an important cultural relic for the study of history, literature and art of the Tang Dynasty. It is also a witness of the long history of people-to-people exchanges between China and Japan in the Tang Dynasty and the significant influence of Chinese traditional culture on Japan for thousands of years. Bearing such historical and artistic values, it is a fully deserved national treasure and an important cultural heritage of all mankind.