Pictorial Songs of the Brush: A Guide to Paintings in the National Palace Museum Collection (2024-I

Anonymous, Eastern Han dynasty

This rubbing was taken from an image re-engraved on the basis of a rubbing—the first rubbing was taken from the side of a sarcophagus originally interred on a cliffside during the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220) that was excavated in Xinjin County in Sichuan province, China. The image features three scenes arranged side by side, each of which illustrates a separate story. The rubbing on display in this exhibition, entitled “Confucius Meeting Lao-tzu,” is currently the only artwork of this type from Sichuan depicting this meeting of wise men. It is generally thought that this story reflects notions about respecting educators, inquiring to learn about the Way, studying the teachings of sages, and seeking spiritual transcendence that were current during the Han dynasty. However, this image only depicts Lao-tzu (ca. 6th-5th centuries BCE), Confucius (551-479 BCE), and a number of students, which sets it apart from depictions of the same story from other regions, and suggests that this illustration may contain layers of unique meaning that have yet to be ascertained.

Anonymous, Song dynasty

Sima Guang etablished the Garden of Joyful Solitude in the city of Luoyang in 1073. Sima lived in this garden welling with his family for fifteen years, and in this time he compiled the Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance, a massive chronicle spanning 1400 years of Chinese history. During this period he hosted elegant gathering of his friends, allowing the garden to deeply embody his personal attitudes and outlook towards life, while also confirming the Comprehensive Mirror as the work most closely associated with Northern Song dynasty literati’s horticultural efforts.
This painting has long been attributed to an unknown Song dynasty painter. Not a single human figure is to be found in this piece, but both the layout of the gardens and the simple, unadorned style of the grounds are in close accord with numerous historical accounts. These factors make this painting much closer to being a three-dimensional representation of the Garden of Joyful Solitude than other depictions of the same subject, and also help to recreate the actual appearance of Sima’s gardens.

Copy of Wang Wei’s Wangchuan Depictions Attributed to Guo Zhongshu Anonymous, Ming dynasty

Ever since the Tang dynasty, the “Wangchuan Depictions” have been regarded as paintings of the twenty scenes described by the poet Wang Wei (701-761) in his “Wangchuan Anthology.” Amid the various copies made by later painters, it is said that Guo Zhongshu’s (?-977) cleaves closest to the spirit of the ancients. That being said, research indicates that these later copies were all made by people who created their paintings while lacking firsthand knowledge of Wang Valley’s actual geography in addition to being ignorant of the contents of Wang Wei’s poems. For instance, in the scenes in this painting labeled and “Hill of the Hatchet-Leaved Bamboos” and “Lane of Palace Ash Trees” do not depict the Wugan postal road. Additionally, the ordering of the labels for “South Hill” and “North Hill” was reversed. Not only do these features reveal errors made during transcription, they also shed light on a trend of guessing at the features of Wang Wei’s mountainous pied-à-terre that began in the late Ming dynasty.

Zheng Chong, Ming dynasty.

Zheng Chong (fl. 1610-1648) had the style name Chongsheng and the sobriquets Lanchong and “Taoist of the Winds” (Fengdaoren). A disciple of Ding Yunpeng (1547-after1628), he excelled at painting Buddhist figures and small landscapes. Zheng Chong (fl. 1610-1648) had the style name Chongsheng and the sobriquets Lanchong and “Taoist of the Winds” (Fengdaoren). A disciple of Ding Yunpeng (1547-after1628), he excelled at painting Buddhist figures and small landscapes. Zheng Chong (fl. 1610-1648) had the style name Chongsheng and the sobriquets Lanchong and “Taoist of the Winds” (Fengdaoren). A disciple of Ding Yunpeng (1547-after1628), he excelled at painting Buddhist figures and small landscapes. Zheng Chong (fl. 1610-1648) had the style name Chongsheng and the sobriquets Lanchong and “Taoist of the Winds” (Fengdaoren). A disciple of Ding Yunpeng (1547-after1628), he excelled at painting Buddhist figures and small landscapes.

This painting depicts the story of the Taoist Ge Hong (283-343) moving to Mount Luofu in order to cultivate the Tao and refine alchemical elixirs. The axial mountain is portrayed with layer after layer of overlapping ridges, with trails, streams, and porticos winding their way through the landscape. The unfurling mists and cranes soaring through the sky create the palpable ambience of a mysterious land inhabited by divine beings. The brushwork emulates Wang Meng’s (1308-1385) “ox hair” texturing strokes. This piece’s linework is densely detailed, while its coloration has a lucidly classical elegance. This pairing effects the delightfulness of brush and ink painting and a sense of ornamentation—much in line with the words of a later commentator who said that this painting “takes after the famous paintings of the Song and Yuan dynasties, embodying their charms and studying their essence.”.

Xiang Shengmo, Ming dynasty

Xiang Shengmo (1597-1658) had the style name Kongzhang and the sobriquets “Temple of Ease” and “Firewood Gatherer from Mount Guxu” (Yi’an and Guxushan Qiao). He was a Ming loyalist who lived in the early Qing dynasty and a representative member of the Jiaxing school of painting.

This painting portrays the story of Lin Hujing’s life of seclusion on Mount Gu, located next to Hangzhou’s West Lake, while also blending in elements of Song dynasty literatus Su Shi’s “A Record of Releasing Cranes.” A solitary figure stands gazing outwards from atop a small hill forested with flowering plum trees, while a crane returns from just beyond the lakeside ramada. The West Lake’s two causeways, one named for Su Shi and the other for Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi, are both visible, as is the Baochu Pagoda—these scenic attractions are composed along a series of concentric circles, enhancing the way in which the human figure, crane, plum trees, and hill appear to share a sense of intimacy and independence from the outside world. Real-life locations, a well-known story, and the contents of Su’s essay are all interwoven in this deeply creative and poignantly elegant painting.

Stories from the Extensive Records of the Era of Great Peace Puru, Republican era

The Extensive Records of the Era of Great Peace, compiled in 978, comprise more than 500 tales. This album of paintings by Puru contains 26 leaves, each of which presents a scene illustrating one of the stories in the Extensive Records. These works condense the climaxes of these tales into incredibly small format paintings that feature beautifully precise brushwork and a lucid, leisurely style. Puru transcribed the original stories on each leaf in an easygoing, confident calligraphic hand. The stories throughout the album mutually complement one another—some are bizarre, some are humorous, some are sarcastic, and others present moral lessons, giving the sense that viewing these paintings is like sitting down for an uproarious chat in an eminent scholar’s home library. This exhibition presents four leaves from the album, entitled “Scorching a Dragon,” “Yao Xiaopin,” “Stone Turtle at the Seaside,” and “Zhitong the Buddhist Monk.”

Chang Dai-chien, Republican era

Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983) had the given name Yuan; he called his studio the “Hall of Great Wind” (Dafeng Tang), which also became one of his sobriquets. As a modern-day calligrapher and painter, he enjoyed worldwide fame for his style of painting, which involved the “splashed ink” and “splashed colors” techniques. The Jataka Tales, which narrate stories of previous incarnations of the historical buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, were written in order to enlighten the masses. This scroll is a copy of a painting in the cave at Dunhuang designated as no. 257 by the Dunhuang Academy. This painting illustrates a story in which the Deer King saves a herd of deer and thereby inspires a worldly king to convert to Buddhism. The original painting, which is the only work depicting the Deer King in the Dunhuang Caves, breaks from the story’s narrative structure by placing its climax—the Deer King’s meeting with the worldly king—at the center of the scene. This feature reveals the way in which the mural’s composition was cleverly crafted around the dimensions of the cave’s walls. While the colors of the 1,500-year-old original have faded dramatically, this copy luckily allows us to envisage its original appearance. This painting was donated to the NPM by Chang Dai-chien.