The work "Wenyuan Tu" was previously mostly considered to be the work of Han Zhuo in the Tang Dynasty, because in the upper left corner of the painting, there are Song Huizong Zhao Tuo inscriptions "Han Di Wen Yuan Tu" and "Tianyi Ren" pledge characters. However, according to the research of Xu Bangda and others, this figure is the second half of the surviving five generations of Zhou Wenzhi "Liulitang Character Diagram", and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States now has a volume of "Liulitang Character Diagram", and the second half is completely consistent with this "Wenyuan Diagram", so the actual author should be the fifth generation of Southern Tang painter Zhou Wenzhi, and the original emperor also had a time of error.
"Wenyuan Tu" is a silk color painting created by Zhou Wenji in the fifth generation, which is now in the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing. The so-called "Wenyuan" is the place where literati and elegant people gather, and it is said that the picture in the picture is the situation of the Sheng Tang poet Wang Changling and the "poetry immortals" Li Bai, Gao Shi and others at the banquet in Jiangning Liulitang, and the painter made this picture to show the scene when the four literati conceived and created poems. This figure is a figure of a person, a vivid portrayal of the gathering of literati, depicting four literati chanting under the pine, and a boy leaning over the stone to grind ink. Two people on the left, one holding a chapter to look back and another literati for a state of study; on the right one is touching The Lone Pine is contemplative, and the other is leaning over the stone with one hand to support the chin, and the other hand is stroking the scroll, making a gaze of contemplation and contemplation of the meaning of the word, which is unusually fascinating. The five people in the painting are vivid, appropriate, and energetic, and each is as diverse as he or she looks.
"Wenyuan Tu" is a well-known painting, from the collection seals and inscriptions left on the map, we can know its approximate circulation, the painting has been collected by the Southern Tang JixianYuan, the Northern Song Huizong, the Southern Song Song Gaozong, the Yuan Dynasty painter Wang Meng, the Ming Dynasty collector Gu Zhengyi, and Guo Qujie. This work entered the Inner House during the Qing Dynasty and was written in the "Initial Compilation of Shiqu Baodi", and the hand scroll was converted into a volume during the Qianlong period. It was eventually deposited in the Palace Museum and preserved to the present day.
The valuable thing about "Wenyuan Tu" is that the painter does not express the character form in general, but extends the brush to the depths of the character's soul, and paints the instantaneous appearance of the character in a specific environment with the same and different. The poets are engrossed in searching for and conceiving the best sentences; but the forms, expressions, and eyes of each poet are different: some lean on the dry contemplation, some hold the cheeks in reverie, some contemplate the scroll, and some look sideways. The painter vividly and naturally depicts the expression of each poet who concentrates on finding and conceiving verses, showing his superb painting skills.