Zhao Shu, the tenth emperor of the Song Dynasty, is also one of the few long-lived emperors in Chinese history. He is proficient in calligraphy, good truth, practice, cursive writing, and his brushwork is free and graceful, natural and smooth, quite Jinren charm.
During Zhao Shu's reign, he believed that Qin Hui killed Yue Fei, and there was a lot of criticism, but in terms of art alone, Zhao Shu was a big man, he was proficient in poetry and music, good at calligraphy and painting, and his interests had always been in pen and ink, and he was an emperor who was quite diligent in learning calligraphy.
"Duck Head Pill Post"
Zhao Shu was born in the first year of Daguan. According to the history of Song, her biological mother Wei was a maid in the palace, and after giving birth to Zhao Shu, she took the throne of Wanrong. He has been intelligent and studious since he was a child, physically strong, good at riding and shooting, etc., and his literary talent and martial arts are outstanding. At the age of 15, he was made King of Kang by Jin.
Jingkang's first year Jin Ren soldiers came to the city, and Emperor Qinzong, who had just taken over power from Emperor Huizong, immediately asked Jin Ren for peace, and the 19-year-old Zhao Zhi was not afraid of life and death, and took on the heavy responsibility of the next meeting.
The prince of the Song Dynasty must have gone to be a hostage or not, but Zhao Shu stayed under the custody of Jin Ren for more than ten days, and the situation did not make Jin Ren suspicious, and decided that he was not the real Prince of Song, so he asked to replace Zhao Shu the Prince of Su as a hostage, and Zhao Shu was lucky to be released back to the Central Plains.
However, the war did not end, and the Jin army finally captured the Qin and Hui emperors in the second year of Jingkang, and ransacked the imperial city, and a large number of books and anthologies of the Song court were also plundered and destroyed, which is known in history as the "Jingkang Change".
At this time, Zhao Zhi escaped because he had been sent to Hebei to fight earlier, becoming the only bloodline of the Song royal family, and in May of the same year, he took the throne in Yingtianfu in Nanjing and established a new regime, named the first year of Jianyan, becoming the founding emperor in the history of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Preface to the Collected Works of Emperor Huizong
Although Bianjing had been recaptured, Zhao was still terrified, fearing that he would also become a prisoner of Jin soldiers like his father and brother.
In the eleventh year of Shaoxing, he relieved Yue Fei, Han Shizhong and other generals of military power, and expressed his determination to make peace to the Jin Dynasty.
Soon, he conspired with Qin Hui to create a case against Yue Fei's father and son, and killed him on "trumped-up" charges, so he signed a peace agreement with Jin to surrender Shaoxing, and paid tribute to Jin in exchange for Jin recognizing his rule in the area south of the Huai River and Dasanguan.
Since then, the Southern Song Dynasty has had a relatively stable period of development.
Zhao Shu said after Yue Fei's death: "Non Qing is unfaithful, not unknown", which shows that Zhao Shu is not a real comatose monarch, he just deliberately pretends to be confused.
It was only because Yue Fei's belief was exactly contrary to the comfort he wanted, so even though he knew that Yue Fei was loyal to the imperial court, he still could not tolerate him.
In the 32nd year of Shaoxing, Zhao Zhi, who was 55 years old at the time, issued an edict ceding the imperial throne to Emperor Xiaozong Zhao Fu, claiming that Emperor Taishang retired to Deoksugung Palace.
Finally, without worrying about national affairs all day, he also ushered in the peak period of artistic development.
During this time, Zhao Zhi concentrated on learning calligraphy and scripture history, and occasionally carried out activities such as sightseeing, and his calligraphy skills developed by leaps and bounds, shifting from practical calligraphy in the early stage to artistic calligraphy, during which a theoretical work of calligraphy "Han Mozhi" was also completed after his abdication.
The life passed freely until Chunhee died in Deoksugung Palace in the fourteenth year, with the temple number Gojong, at the age of eighty-one.
"Linlan Pavilion Preface"
Inherit the "Two Kings" style of writing
The Song Emperor's promotion of the idea of "emphasizing culture over martial arts" and the policy of "ruling the world by culture" ran through the entire Song dynasty, laying a solid political foundation for the cultural and educational road of the Song Dynasty, and the art of calligraphy could also be reborn and set off a climax here.
Zhao Zhi grew up in the imperial palace at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, where the wind of calligraphy and painting was pervasive, and he had the conditions to observe the famous masters collected by the imperial family since he was a child, and he was affected by the appreciation, collection, creation and other calligraphy activities that were prevalent at that time, which made him have a special love for the art of calligraphy.
His scholarly inheritance is not limited to a certain scholar, but to a multi-teacher. In his early years, he followed his father to learn the Huang Tingjian calligraphy, and after ascending the throne, he began to use the yellow script to write books, and it can be clearly seen from his Xingshu ink blots that there are characteristics of the central palace tightening and stretching on all sides.
Later, he studied Mi Fu calligraphy, which was also known as everyone in the Song Dynasty, and then transferred to Sun Guoting and others in the Tang Dynasty, and finally devoted himself to studying the father and son of Wei Jin Zhongxiu and Wang Xizhi and Wang Xian.
Zhao Zhi highly admired Wang Xi's calligraphy, especially the search for the "Orchid Pavilion Preface" can be described as exhausted, he loved the "Orchid Pavilion Preface", often spent a lot of time to learn the brushwork, especially during his retirement to Deoksugung Palace, he could devote himself to the art of calligraphy, and the creation of calligraphy gradually formed his own style of calligraphy under the "two kings" system.
In addition, Zhao Zhi also has a clear grasp of the brushwork of the five bodies of calligraphy, and proposed that the study of books should pay attention to the order of learning books of correct, line, and grass and the principle of the flexibility of the five bodies, "Scholar writing characters, there are five bodies of truth, line, grass, subordination, and seal, often seal and subordinate become a family, true, line, and grass become a family in their own right, with different pen meanings, each limited to dot painting, there is no trace of self-satisfaction, so don't be a household." If you change it, then all five works are in the pen, and there is no blockage, but only in the way. ”
It can be seen that Zhao Zhi knows that the study of books should not be bound by the rules of integration, but must grasp the changes between the various bodies, and emphasized that when learning the five-body brushwork, it is necessary to integrate it in order to write a good calligraphy that is excellent and self-contained.
"Seven Words Poetry Page"
As an emperor, his words are beautiful
Zhao was born in an imperial family, and his good family learning tradition created unique conditions for him to learn books and lay a solid foundation in calligraphy; The learning process of learning from the ancients and Zhuan Yiduo has achieved his final achievement in calligraphy, and has the ability to open the retro atmosphere of the Southern Song Dynasty.
Zhao Shu's calligraphy creation is quite successful, whether from the ink of the calligraphy or the calligraphy, it has the characteristics of neatness, calmness and tactfulness with the pen, and the style is simple and elegant, quite charming.
In particular, the cursive writing he made in his later years during the Deoksugung Palace period was "casual", which revealed his "natural nature" and "unintentional good" creative state.
"Buddha Top Bright Pagoda Stele"
The whole writing is imposing and full of pen power, the Yellow Valley radiant style is obvious, the pen, knot, seal, etc. are all taken from Huang Tingjian, this inscription is "June of the third year of Shaoxing", when Emperor Gaozong was 27 years old, is the early work of his calligraphy style formation.
"Zhiyue Fei Hand Edict"
The number of words per line is not the same and is staggered, with the font between the line and the front. From the overall layout, the breath is circulating, the atmosphere is vivid, the knot is charming and colorful, the flank is the main position, and there is Wang Xizhi's pen charm, which is integrated and through, forming its own style.
"Zhiyue Fei Criticism Scroll"
The skimming and twisting in the dot painting are strong and powerful, the beauty is lovely, there is absolutely no saber rattling, the knot is charming and colorful, clear and handsome, from which you can see its iron painting silver hook, and sometimes the subjective pursuit of flanking the position. Although the words are not connected, they are connected by qi, and they are quite bookish.
"Ji Kang Health Theory"
Studying Zhiyong's "True Grass Thousand Character Text", the words on the chapter are independent, peaceful and neat, the whole text does not have large retraction and ups and downs, and the pen is mainly meandering, warm and skillful, charming and pure.
"Cursive Luoshenfu"
The works written during the Deoksugung Palace period in his later life, from the perspective of chapters, although the whole cursive script is independent in words, it has the characteristics of being completed in one go and vivid; The pen is easy and free, the pressing is vivid and fluent, and the calligraphy is skillful.
Preface to the Collected Works of Emperor Huizong
The knot is more stretched, the pen is subtle and charming, the stroke is clear, the thickness gap is obvious, the curvature and skimming arc increase, the penmanship is changeable without showing the edge, the pen and pen turn discount is natural, and the calmness of writing and the maturity of the pen are obvious.
"Southern Song Dynasty Tai Xue Stone Sutra"
As the supreme ruler of the Southern Song Dynasty, calligraphy for him can be described as both governance and entertainment. Although his calligraphy level could not be compared with the three schools of Su, Huang and Mi of the Northern Song Dynasty, he did not even reach the height of his father Huizong's creation of a new body.
However, as an emperor, Zhao Shu has supreme power and strong appeal, and under his initiative, the Southern Song Dynasty book world successfully opened the wind of "retro calligraphy", and the practice and theory of calligraphy also influenced the development of mainstream calligraphy, and even throughout the development of Southern Song calligraphy, which is enough to prove that his achievements in calligraphy cannot be underestimated.