Feng Wenwei (1814–1896), courtesy name Liantang and Xiu'an, was a native of Wucheng (present-day Huzhou), Zhejiang. He was a tanhua in the second year of Qing Guangxu (1876), taught the Hanlin Academy to edit, and successively served as the chief examiner of Henan Xuezheng and Jiangnan Township Examination. The Feng family has been a reader for generations, and the collection of inscriptions and paintings in the family is extremely rich, and Feng Wenwei has been immersed in it for a long time, and has quite accomplished in calligraphy, especially in calligraphy, with a heroic and majestic, handsome and superb style. Feng Wenwei was not only one of the famous Hanlin calligraphers of the late Qing Dynasty, but also an expert in appreciating inscriptions and paintings. When Feng Wenwei served in the Hanlin Academy, his family members still stayed in his hometown of Wuxing, Zhejiang, and in addition to business, he often visited the Liulichang antique shop alone, and this repeated viewing greatly broadened his future collection horizons. Feng Wenwei loves to collect inscriptions and paintings, but as an editor, the official is small, in addition to daily expenses, there is not much silver left, but when he encounters beloved antiques, he always donates money to buy.
Feng Wenwei's calligraphy works are typical of the Qing Dynasty Hanlin calligraphy, the glyph structure will be more or less affected by the Qing Dynasty stele school, with a full and fat pen, and a graceful elegance is revealed between the lines. Feng Wenwei's calligraphy is relatively rare on the market, and it is rare to see such exquisite works.
Feng Wenwei's calligraphy works, looking at the overall use of ink, the change of ink color changes from thick to light, and then from light to dry. The brush strokes are heavier in the thick ink, dark and shiny, the light ink is warm and shiny, and the dry ink is astringent but not dry, which can be said to be the difference between Feng Wenwei and other Hanlin calligraphers of the same era. Contemporary Hanlin calligraphers emphasized the characteristics of Wu, Fang and Guang, which looked relatively rigid and sluggish, without a vivid atmosphere. In Feng Wenwei's calligraphy works, we seem to find no place where there is discomfort, he dissolves the characteristics of the font square, emphasizes the side of the font in the structure, presents the trend of left low right high, and cleverly avoids the drawbacks of the sluggish pavilion body. In the arrangement of font size, it also emphasizes the jagged chapter method, and even widens the distance between words, which has some ethereal rhythmic sense from the overall point of view. If you carefully read Feng Wenwei's calligraphy works and understand them word by word, there seems to be a kind of bookish atmosphere rushing in front of you between the lines, which is the cultivation of the inner body of a writer, and it is also the cultivation that every calligrapher should have.