Riding the wind of rebirth

The origin of Zheng Banqiao's judgment is also very interesting.

In ancient times, when ordinary people went to the Yamen to file a complaint, they had to submit a "petition paper" stating the content of the lawsuit. After the county magistrate concludes the case, he writes the verdict on the front page or at the end of the pleading, which is called a "judgment slip."

Zheng Banqiao has been the county magistrate for twelve years. Logically speaking, there should be many decrees, but this is not the case.

Because throughout the dynasties, document management has been very strict and must be stored and archived centrally. Even destruction has a fixed age and format. Except for natural disasters, there is basically no chance of destruction.

Therefore, only some people in the county government who had access to these files secretly cut out the judgments on the pleadings and took them out for fun, because they liked to put themselves at risk, so that they could be passed down to the world.

After more than two hundred years, very few traces can be found.

As far as Zhou Zhi knows, the same thing by Zheng Banqiao is only collected in the Forbidden City, the National Museum, and the Shandong Provincial Museum. In his personal collection, only one copy is in the personal collection of Tsujimoto of the island country.

This judgment was written by Zheng Banqiao, a crazy and talented man, so the essence of its calligraphy is extremely obvious, and it is far more valuable for research than Zheng Banqiao's deliberately created works.

In order to seek a breakthrough in the art of calligraphy, Zheng Banqiao deliberately mixed different calligraphy styles and deliberately sought changes. He took six and a half of the "eight-point calligraphy" and created the shocking "six-and-a-half-point" calligraphy, which became one of the "Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou" one.

Therefore, although this casual judgment is small, it vividly displays his calligraphy style, which is very euphemistic and lovely.

At the end of this document, there are also the seals of the famous epigrapher Chen Jieqi of the Qing Dynasty, "History of the Seaside" and "Qidong Tao Fu", the seals of the famous calligraphy and painting artist Yin Shoushi, and the seal of Li Yimeng's seal "Wu Zhi Zhai". "Jian Zang", "Yi Meng Jing Jian", "Yi Meng's Collection", and regular script seals "Chengdu Li Yimeng", "Yi Meng Sixty".

These seals prove Li Yimeng's love for Zheng Banqiao and the sequence of its circulation.

And another thing is even more important, "Baiyang Shitao's Calligraphy and Painting Collection".

This is a collection of seventeen picture albums, the most important of which are the picture albums of Chen Chun and Shi Tao.

To be precise, the originator of the freehand brushwork school in the Chinese painting world can even be traced back to Wang Qia in the Tang Dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty, Liang Kai made a breakthrough contribution, making freehand brushwork a typical "signature style of literati".

It was Chen Chun and Xu Wei in the Ming Dynasty who truly formed a set of creative theories and pushed it to the pinnacle of art. Xu Wei in particular turned it into a pinnacle of artistic achievement and had a profound impact.

In the following four hundred years, the artistic language he created attracted countless followers and imitators.

The successors were Bada Shanren and Shi Tao among the four monks in the early Qing Dynasty; then Huang Shen and Ren Yi of the Yangzhou School of Painting; and then in modern times, Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian, Huang Binhong, Fu Baoshi... …left a bright page in the history of Chinese art.

Zhou Zhi also owns a similar collection, which is "Six Albums of Baiyang Ivy, Landscapes, Flowers and Birds", which is the work of Chen Chun and Xu Wei, the two founding masters of the school. The grade is much higher than the current one, but it is not as rich in content as the current one. The books have paintings and are passed down in an orderly manner. In addition to the paintings by Chen Chun and Shi Tao, there are also poems and essays by generations of collectors, which add richer cultural value.

The seventeenth page of this volume contains an inscription and postscript written by the first-generation collector Jiang Deliang, followed by his epitaph. The epitaph comes from Jiang Deliang's good friend Wang Zhong, and it was obviously added by Jiang Deliang's descendants.

The title and postscript explain the origin of this album. Jiang Deliang's grandfather, Jiang Shidong, was a businessman. This set of albums was his earliest collection. "At that time, he was very proud of himself."

Jiang Shidong gave birth to a son named Jiang Xun, who was Jiang Deliang's father, and later became the prefect of Huizhou.

Jiang Xun also collected a large number of epigraphy, calligraphy and paintings, and Jiang Deliang had been exposed to them since he was a child.

His father was very happy to see that he was interested in these things. He thought that since his son was interested, these collections could be kept in the family for decades, and he could be considered a successor.

Jiang Deliang later lived up to the expectations of his father and ancestors. When he became an adult, he passed the exam in the 45th year of Qianlong's reign, became an editor of the Hanlin Academy, and became a famous scholar in the Qianlong Dynasty.

In addition to being collectors and Jinshi officials, Jiang Xun was also a painter, specializing in grass and insects, but he was not very famous, and his works could only be stored in provincial museums. Zhou Zhi also had his painting "Hemerocallis and Nymphoides".

Jiang Deliang was also a calligrapher, especially good at writing official script. There is a page in this album with the four official script characters he inscribed "Aura of Heaven", which is quite beautiful.

Jiang Deliang's calligraphy works are not collected by Zhou Zhi, but Jiang Deliang once had a rubbing of "Han Jujuo Ling Liu Xiong Stele". This rubbing was later brought to the capital and caused a sensation. Weng Fanggang, a great calligrapher at the time, even mentioned it in his notes Zhou Zhi had seen this matter, this double-hook copy of rubbings, in Qi's hometown.

Literati in ancient times had contacts with each other. Although Jiang Shidong was a businessman, he was also good at educating his younger generations and had close contacts with intellectuals. He once helped Shi Tao sell many paintings.

This picture album was originally a picture album by Chen Chun. Unfortunately, a fire accidentally caught fire, causing the album to be "burned with half of its pages." So the Jiang family asked Monk Shi Tao to repaint the picture album at the price of two taels of silver a piece. It was continued, so this picture album became "Baiyang Shitao's Painting and Calligraphy Album".

Later, the album flowed out of the Jiang family and was acquired by Huang Xixi, the son of Huang Zhiyun, a great salt merchant in the Qing Dynasty. Huang Zhiyun's garden was the best in the country at that time, and his library, Qiyunshan Hall, once had a large collection.

Huang Xixi asked his teacher Wu Xizai to inscribe on it. Wu Xizai was the first person in China to write seal script and seal cutting in the Tongzhi period, and Wu Changshuo was deeply influenced by his calligraphy style.

The four-character seal script "Feng Shen Jin Gu" left on this album is also a fine piece.

Later, this post was spread to Li Guosong, a great collector in Hankou during the Republic of China. Li Guosong was followed by the collector of Shenyang in the Republic of China, the Ministry of Education Shi Shouyu and his younger brother Shi Shouzhang.

Shi Shouyu was a famous collector in the Republic of China. His seal is found on many works in the Forbidden City, including "Ode to the Heart" written by Zhao Zhiqian in imitation of the Sui monk Zhiguo, and calligraphy works by the famous calligrapher Wang Duo of the Qing Dynasty and others. .

Finally, the album reached Li Yimeng.

There are actually only six works belonging to Chen Chun on this album, the other six are paintings completed by Shi Tao, and the remaining five pages contain poems, articles, calligraphy, collection seals, etc. from collectors in the past, giving this piece of The collection has rich cultural connotations.

This is the value of handed down products. Studying their circulation can further prove their authenticity from one aspect, which is also a traditional means of collection.

Many of these successive connoisseurs were great artists themselves, and their "appraisal opinions" later became important cultural relics themselves. The accumulation of buffs along the way makes the value of handed down calligraphy and painting works far exceed those of works without circulation order. . (End of chapter)