Selected Masterpieces of Song and Yuan Dynasty Calligraphy

Song calligraphy was about expressing personal feeling and interest, which later writers called shangyi. Cai Xiang, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian and Mi Fu appeared one after another and came to be known together as the Four Masters of the Song; Su Shi said of his own writing that it was made by intent and had no fixed rule, the opposite of the Tang respect for strict method. In the early Yuan the general taste was for a return to the ancients, learning from the Jin and Tang with little innovation. Zhao Mengfu argued for blending the spirit of Jin writing into the strict Tang method, and Wang Xizhi influenced him most; he, Xianyu Shu and Deng Wenyuan were called the Three Masters of the early Yuan, and many calligraphers of the time followed him in favoring zhangcao.

Look at whether the strokes are let loose or held tight, and whether the characters run into each other or each stands on its own; then compare with the date on the label.

• Handscroll, hanging scroll, album 卷、軸、冊頁→Calligraphy is mounted as handscrolls, hanging scrolls and albums too, and each is looked at in its own way.

Chinese painting and calligraphy can be mounted in several formats, among them the handscroll, the album, and the hanging scroll. A handscroll is wider than it is tall and is usually viewed from the right end, so its composition unfolds from right to left; the traditional way was to unroll it with the left hand while rolling it up with the right, a section at a time, rather than laying it all out at once. A frontispiece sits on the right before the painting, and the section after it is left for inscriptions, the colophons. A hanging scroll hangs vertically on a wall and is seen whole; it is not meant to stay up for good, and traditionally it is shown for a while, then rolled up and stored, changed with the season or the occasion. An album gathers small paintings into a single volume. Of the seventeen paintings in the National Palace Museum's A Keen Eye, nine are handscrolls, six hanging scrolls, and two album leaves: the longest, Pu Ru's Evening Glow over a River Village, measures 1,192.5 cm wide and 49 cm high, and the tallest, Zhang Daqian's Wide River, Distant Mountains, is a hanging scroll 194.3 cm high.

Check whether the label says handscroll, hanging scroll, or album: walk a handscroll from right to left a section at a time; with a hanging scroll, step back to see it whole, then come close for the details.