This summer, the National Palace Museum in Taipei has a highly anticipated special exhibition of blockbuster calligraphy and paintings, "Lost Pearls - Collected Calligraphy and Paintings of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art", which was finally officially launched on July 24, 2021.
In this special exhibition, in addition to more than 10 important calligraphy and painting works collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei, more than 40 extremely precious Chinese paintings and calligraphy works from the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art are also exhibited.
Among them, there is a rare treasure that "crossed other countries" - "Sending Sons and Heavenly Kings".
On the occasion of the rare treasure to be exhibited at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Zhejiang People's Fine Arts Publishing House took the initiative to contact the Osaka Municipal Art Museum and obtained the official authorization of the museum to release this excellent album of Tang Dynasty paintings of Saint Wu Daozi's "Sending Sons to the Heavenly King".
1
Why this national treasure was lost to other places, it has to be mentioned that it is Abe Fangjiro.
At the beginning of the 20th century, when the owner of the famous Japanese collector Chenghuaitang, Yamamoto Tijiro, was searching for calligraphy and paintings in Fujian, Zhejiang, Beijing and Luzhou in China, he bought the "Picture of the Heavenly King of sending children" and brought it back to Japan and hid it in his own Chenghuaitang.
The painting was later handed over to Abe.
Abe Fushiro (1868-1937)
In Japan, when it comes to Chinese painting and calligraphy collections, the owner of the "Shuanglaikan" Abe Fukujiro is one of the leaders.
Art historian Li Lincan once pointed out that "the collection of the Abe's Shuanglai Museum can actually go hand in hand with the collections of The Hanguang Pavilion of Guluofu and the Wutang of Wang Jiqian in the United States, which can be called the three dingjia of overseas private Chinese painting and calligraphy collections, and can make up for the shortcomings of the Forbidden City collection." In the history of modern Chinese art collection, the Abe collection is among the best in the traditional Chinese paintings and calligraphy collected by Private Japan, regardless of scale and quality.
A few years ago, Su Shi's "Dead Wood Strange Stone Diagram", which sold for 463.6 million Hong Kong dollars and set a record for the highest price of ancient Chinese paintings at that time, is the old collection of Abe Fangjiro.
Su Shi's "Dead Wood Strange Stone Diagram"
Six years after his death, his son Takajiro Abe donated all 160 of his collection to the Osaka City Museum of Art in accordance with his last wishes. Among them is this "Sending Son Heavenly King Diagram".
2
This "Picture of sending a son to the King" now in the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in Japan can be said to be the earliest and highest level work in the remains of Wu Daozi's paintings.
Let's start by admiring this exquisite and exquisite work. The painting is framed in hand-rolled, white on paper, with a center size of 35.7 cm in length and 338 cm in width.
The earliest record of the "Sending Son Heavenly King Diagram" appears in the Ming Dynasty calligraphy and painting collector Zhang Qiu's "Qinghe Calligraphy and Painting Ship", Zhang Ugly praised: "Wu Daozi's "Sending Son Heavenly King Diagram", on paper, ink and ink authenticity, is the first famous painting of Han Shi (Cunliang), also the first of the world's famous paintings. "Shows its position as the number one in the world."
According to Mao Cone's "List of Famous Paintings in Nanyang": "Song Gaozong Qian gua Shaoxing Xiaoxi, Jia Xiangdao sealed the long seal, Cao Zhongxuan, Li Boshi, Wang Qian, etc., are Wu's true deeds." It can be seen that this is also an orderly masterpiece.
Let's look at the picture itself and analyze in detail why there is such a high evaluation of "Sending Son Heavenly King".
After the birth of Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism, his father, King Jingyi, carried him into the temple and the gods prayed to him. The scroll is divided into three parts:
The first part is that two celestial generals are rolling forward with a mighty and powerful dragon, and a solemnly seated god seems to be waiting for something. The strange dragon headed towards the Heavenly King, seemingly struggling. Behind the heavenly king, there are two celestial maidens and a god who holds a wat next to him, next to a celestial general holding a quiver in one hand and a weapon in the other, and two ghost gods in the distance.
The second part of the scroll shows a celestial goddess approaching a god with a magic vessel, the god has three heads, four arms and four legs, he sits on a stone, surrounded by flames erupting from the four heads of dragons, lions, tigers, and elephants. On the left, there is a woman holding a fairy bottle, and a celestial general holding a weapon as a courtesan.
The main character of the work is in the third part: the white-faced King of Pure Rice carefully carries the prince forward, followed by the dignified and beautiful princess, Lady Maya, the mother of Shakya, and a waiter near her. The two main characters are serene and natural, solemn and generous.
3
In the history of Chinese art, there are three artists who have been crowned with the laurels of "saint": one is Wang Xizhi of the Jin Dynasty, known as the "Book Saint", one is Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty, known as the "Poetry Sage", and the other is known as the "Painting Saint", that is, Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty, that is, the author of "Sending Sons to the Heavenly King".
Wu Daozi (c. 686–760) was the ancestor of Chinese landscape painting. Su Shi commented that his art "came out of the new meaning in the law, and sent the mysterious reason to the extravagant", and regarded him as a representative of Tang Dynasty painting, juxtaposing him with the poet Du Fu, the essayist Han Yu, and the calligrapher Yan Zhenqing, praising "poetry as for Du Zimei, literature as for Han Huizhi, books as for Yan Lugong, painting as for Wu Daozi, and the changes in ancient and modern times, the world's ability to do things."
Wu Daozi's works are numerous, but his original works have now been lost.
First, because most of his paintings were painted on the walls of the temple temple, the paintings were destroyed as the walls decayed. Second, there are too many facsimiles, and it is difficult to distinguish between authenticity and falsity. Mi Fu said, "Pseudo Wu Sheng saw three hundred books" and "Yu Bai shou saw the four-axis true pen also".
The paintings of Wu Daozi that we see today are all facsimiles of posterity, including this "Picture of the Heavenly King who Sent Sons". However, just like the "Orchid Pavilion Collection", although it is a facsimile, it is already precious.
This "Picture of the Sending Son of the Heavenly King" collected by the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in Japan basically reflects Wu Daozi's painting style. He broke the long-inherited Gu (Kaizhi) Lu (Tanwei) "tight and vigorous cotton, such as spring silkworm spit silk" kind of gossamer drawing, using orchid leaf drawing, "line pen is sharp, squandered like a pine strip, round between the folds, square circles concave and convex". With the pen, it rises and falls, and the shape is majestic and loose, forming a circle and a floating trend, which is called "Wu Belt Dangfeng".
Wu Daozi, like other painting masters, emphasized that artistic expression must be "conveyed".
In "Sending Sons to the Heavenly King", the heavenly king sitting upright, with his hands on his knees, gazes angrily at the gods and beasts that are rushing forward. One of the Heavenly King's guards pulled the reins of the beast, and the other guard was drawing his sword at each other, and together subdued the opponents, while behind the Heavenly King, the maid grinded ink, and the courtier held the wat and pen, and recorded this sacred relic in the annals of history.
On the other hand, the king of pure rice embraced the baby and slowly moved forward, the queen bowed her hand, and the waiter slapped the fan, which was not only peaceful, but also showed compassion, especially for the fact that the son was obtained, not only the celebration scene of the goddess holding the furnace and the ghost playing with the snake, but also forcing another divine beast to bow down to the ground.
Through the conflict and reconciliation between the characters and the divine beast, the author writes the different psychological states of the son and the son, and transforms from the atmosphere of excitement to calm, showing the level of the development of the story.
Therefore, this "Picture of sending the Son of the Heavenly King" can be called a masterpiece of "writing God in form" and alleging time in the void.
Wu Daozi's painting style has been imitated and borrowed by many painters since the Tang Dynasty and the Song and Yuan Dynasties, and has been respected as a "painting saint" by later generations, and respected as an ancestor by folk craftsmen, which has a great influence on the figure painting and white painting of later generations.
It is such a legendary painter, such a legendary painting, which has been passed down for thousands of years. This figure painting has undoubtedly reached a height that previous generations of painters could not reach.
In Wu Daozi's pen, "God" came to earth through the path of China's secularization. The Yongle Palace of the Yuan Dynasty and the murals of fahai temple in the Ming Dynasty are all in the style of Wu Daozi, and the Dunhuang murals also reflect the essence of the Wu school style.
Murals of Fahai Temple
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