The legend of "Fuchun Mountain Jutu"

On March 14, 2010, at the national "two sessions" press conference, Wen Jiabao told a story in response to a question from a Taiwanese reporter: "There was a painter named Huang Gongwang in the Yuan Dynasty, who painted a famous "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map", which was completed at the age of 79 and died shortly after completion. For hundreds of years, the painting has been lost, but now I know that half of it is in the museum in Hangzhou, half in the Taipei Museum, and I hope that when the two paintings will be combined into one. Painting is so, how can people be embarrassed. Premier Wen's expectations have made the combination of "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" widely concerned by the people on both sides of the strait. From June 1 to September 25, 2011, the Zhejiang Provincial Museum and the Taipei Museum jointly hosted the "Special Exhibition of Landscape and Water - Huang Gongwang and "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" at the Taipei Museum.

"Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" vividly depicts the beautiful scenery of the Fuchun River in a long scroll of about two zhang, and is one of the greatest and most famous works in the history of Chinese painting. Its author, Huang Gongwang, a famous calligrapher and painter of the Yuan Dynasty, was a Suzhou Changshu person, with a long character, a feng, and a big idiot. When he was young, he served as a small official, and at the age of 45, he was unjustly imprisoned, and after his release from prison, he lived in seclusion and entered the Taoist Quanzhen Sect. In his later years, Huang Gongwang lived in seclusion in the Fuchun River, where there was Daling Mountain in the north of the river, and he often wrote about it between the landscapes and rivers. In the seventh year of Emperor Yuanhuizong's reign (1347), Huang Gongwang prepared to create a complete map of Fuchun Mountain, when he was nearly 80 years old, and his paintings had been honed over several years. This picture is on paper, ink, 33 cm in length and 636.9 cm in width, depicting the scenery of Mengqiu on both sides of the Fuchun River, with undulating peaks, deep forests, ink rhymes, vast and simple distances, and is a masterpiece in Huang Gongwang's ink landscape paintings. In the tenth year of Zhengzheng (1350), the 83-year-old taoist monk Huang Gongwang gave this map to a close friend, an old monk, a useless master, and the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" had its first Tibetan master, thus beginning its more than 600 years of ups and downs in the human world.

During the Ming Dynasty, another famous old painter in the history of Chinese painting, Shen Zhou, collected the "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map". When Shen Zhou asked someone to write an inscription on this map, he was hidden by the son of the person who inscribed the picture and lost it. Later, this picture was sold at a high price on the market, and The thick Shen Zhou was both difficult to calculate and unable to buy, so he had to rely on his superb memory to recite a volume to comfort his feelings. The authentic "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" that was lost by Shen Zhou changed hands many times and was later collected by the great Ming Dynasty calligrapher and painter Dong Qichang, who loved it and copied it.

In his later years, Dong Qichang sold it to a man named Wu Zhengzhi in Yixing, and later passed it on to his son Wu Hongyu. When he fled at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Wu Hongyu ignored his family and hid it, but only carried with him the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" and the "Thousand Character True Works of Master Zhiyong". Before his death, Wu Hongyu instructed his family to prepare to burn the "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" for burial. At the moment of the first attack, Wu Hongyu's nephew Wu Jing'an rescued the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" from the fire. Although the painting was saved, the middle burned off into two sections, one large and one small. In 1652, Wu Jigu, a disciple of the Wu family, carefully peeled off the charred part of this damaged scroll and re-stitched the picture. One of the paintings is exactly a mountain, a water, a hill and a ravine, although the picture is small, but relatively complete, it is almost impossible to see that it is spliced after cutting, so people call this painting "Leftover Mountain Map". Another painting has a long scale, retaining the main content of the original painting, but the damage is serious, more repairs, in order to cover up the traces of fire when mounting, the original inscription of Dong Qichang, which was originally located at the base of the painting, was deliberately cut down and placed at the beginning of the painting, which was later called "useless master volume". Because the useless monk once traveled with Huang Gongwang to the Fuchun River, this painting was originally owned by him, so it has this name. The rare national treasure "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" is divided into two, scattered and floating.

In the ninth year of Shunzhi (1652), the great antique dealer Wu Qizhen bought the "Leftover Mountain Map" from the Wu family in Yixing, and after cutting and stitching, re-mounting and adding Wu Qizhen's own stamp, the "Leftover Mountain Map" was renewed and became a masterpiece of art. In the eighth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1669), Wu Qizhen sold the "Remaining Mountain Map" to Wang Tingbin of Yangzhou Tongju, who inscribed a long trek on the back of the scroll, describing its circulation, and framed the "Leftover Mountain Map" into an album collection, and has since become unheard of. Until the 1930s, the "leftover mountain map" fell into the hands of Chen Mou in Jiangyin, and he actually broke the album and retailed it. Later, he was purchased by the painter Wu Hufan and cherished it, and since then he has called himself a "corner of the big idiot Fuchun Mountain Map". After the founding of New China, Sha Menghai, a great calligrapher who worked for the Zhejiang Museum, learned of the whereabouts of the "Leftover Mountain Map" and repeatedly went to Shanghai to discuss donations with Wu Hufan. Wu Hufan was touched by Sha Menghai's sincere heart, and finally agreed to cut love, and dedicated the "Leftover Mountain Map" to the Zhejiang Museum.

After the "useless master scroll" flowed out of the Wu family in Yixing, it was collected by the hands of Zhang Fanmei of Danyang, Ji Guoshi of Taixing, Gao Shiqi, and Wang Hongxu, and finally belonged to the great collector Anqi. In the eleventh year of Qianlong (1746), after the introduction of the university scholar Fu Heng, An Shi transferred this map to the Qingnei Province. However, a dramatic scene appeared. When this treasure-level masterpiece was presented in front of the Qianlong Emperor, he was not happy and was stunned. It turned out that in the previous year, there was already a "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" that had been conscripted into the palace, and the Qianlong Emperor loved it after seeing it, treasured it around him, often took it out to appreciate, and wrote a poem inscription in the blank space of the 6-meter-long scroll, stamped with a jade seal. To Qianlong's surprise, there is now another "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map." The two "Fuchun Mountain Residence Maps", one is true and the other is false, but the two paintings are too similar, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false.

In fact, the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" previously collected by the Qianlong Emperor, that is, the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" that later generations called the "Ziming Scroll", was copied by the literati at the end of the Ming Dynasty. In order to make a profit, the descendants removed the original author's inscription, forged the Huang Gongwang inscription, and also forged the inscriptions of Zou Zhilin and others, all of which deceived the Qianlong Emperor. In fact, the loopholes in the imitation of the "Ziming Scroll" are not difficult to find. The author's inscriptions on the Yuan Dynasty calligraphy and paintings are all after the painting content, while the "Ziming Scroll" places the author's inscription in the blank space above the picture, which is obviously not in line with the characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty calligraphy and painting. However, the level of appreciation of calligraphy and painting by the Qianlong Emperor was obviously not enough to see these loopholes. This volume of "Ziming Scrolls" imitated by posterity not only was he regarded as a treasure and carried around from time to time, but also praised this painting a lot, repeatedly praised, and cherished very much. However, the appearance of the authentic "Useless Master Scroll" did not allow him to overturn his own wrong judgment. What is even more comical is that the Qianlong Emperor firmly declared that the "useless master scroll" was a fake, and at the same time bought this so-called fake at a high price. The reason is that although the painting is not authentic, it is still a good painting. To this end, he also specially invited the minister to come and take a souvenir on the two volumes of the "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map". The ministers who came to see the paintings without exception sang praises of the emperor's broad mind of loving art and not sticking to authenticity, but no one dared to point out the fact that the "useless master's scroll" was the real thing. With the concurrence of Liang Shizheng, Shen Deqian, and other ministers, the "Useless Master Scroll" was considered a forgery and was included in the ranks of the "Shiqu Baodi" (石渠宝笈), and the Qianlong Emperor also ordered Liang Shizheng to write a derogatory note on this book. It was not until 1816 that Hu Jing and other FengJiaqing Emperors compiled the three parts of the "Shiqu Baodi", and the "Useless Master Volume" "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" was first compiled under the correct name, and finally washed away the unjust dust.

No matter how absurd the Qianlong Emperor's appraisal conclusions were, the authentic manuscript of the "Fuchun Mountain Jutu" hidden by An Qi entered the court from then on. It was in this Qianqing Palace that it was quietly stored for nearly 200 years. Today, these two volumes of "Fuchun Mountain Residence Map" are stored in the Taipei Museum, witnessing a joke in the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy collection.

In the process of collecting "Fuchun Mountain Jutu", major famous artists have also copied it, so today there are many copies of "Fuchun Mountain Jutu". Among them, the best is Shen Zhou's Linben, which has been collected by Dong Qichang, Wang Shimin and other famous masters in modern times, and has been collected by Xu Shichang, president of the Republic of China. Later, after auction, the painting was purchased by the Palace Museum in Beijing. (Source| "Chinese History Behind Cultural Relics", Sichuan People's Publishing House/Published by | Tianli)