Wu Ju's "Shou Father's Post" of the Southern Song Dynasty is a precious calligraphy work, presented in ink on paper, with a size of 22.5 cm high and 48.7 cm wide, using a line of calligraphy, a total of 16 lines, about 200 characters, created in the last years of Chunxi in the Southern Song Dynasty (1186-1189), currently collected in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
"Shou Father's Post" shows the natural and smooth style of Wu Ju's pen, and its knot pen is obviously affected by Mi Fu, and has reached a considerable degree of resemblance.
1. Wu Ju's life and calligraphy characteristics Wu Ju, whose name is his father, was born in Bian (now Kaifeng, Henan), and the year of birth and death is unknown. He was an outstanding calligrapher in the Southern Song Dynasty, his father Wu Yi was the younger brother of Empress Wu of the Song Dynasty, and his mother was the eldest granddaughter of Qin Hui. According to the research of scholar Wang Qiang, it is speculated that Wu Ju was born around the twenty-fourth year of Shaoxing (1154) of Gaozong of the Southern Song Dynasty and died between the second year of Ningzong Jiatai of the Southern Song Dynasty and the third year of Kaixi (1202-1207), at the age of about 50.
Wu Ju came from a prominent background, but he had a humble temperament, liked to study ancient posts for his own amusement, and paid attention to reputation and morality. He served as the general judge of Lin'an Mansion in the ninth year of the Southern Song Dynasty (1173), and later held important positions, and was finally praised as Zhonghui, and was respected by later generations as the king of Wu Qijun.
Wu Ju's calligraphy works are not many, mainly including "Shoufu Post", "Xingcao Poetry Post", "Miscellaneous Poems", "Fuzi Post", "Urgent Foot Post", "Jiaoshan Inscription Two Posts" and so on. Among them, "Shou Father's Post" is a letter he wrote to his father when he was an official in Xiangyang, showing his delicate and smooth penmanship and flexible writing skills.
Second, the enlightenment significance of Wu Ju's calligraphy Although Wu Ju's calligraphy is considered to be "peerless" Mi Fu and highly praised, but some descendants criticize it as a "slave book", and was not included in the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty among the four major calligraphers. This was mainly due to his failure to achieve true innovation in the creation of calligraphy.
Wu Ju's limitations are partly caused by the background of the times, the social turmoil of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the loss of many precious inscriptions, which limited his creative horizons. On the other hand, Wu Ju was too deeply influenced by Mi Fu, failed to jump out of its calligraphy style, lack of personalized performance.
Judging from the experience of calligraphers of the past generations, the creation of calligraphy should not only inherit the tradition, but also be innovative. Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing and other famous artists have formed a unique calligraphy style on the basis of learning traditional calligraphy, combined with their own experience and creation. Therefore, Wu Ju's experience reminds us that we must be brave in innovation on the basis of learning from tradition in order to achieve the true realm of calligraphy.