Page 42 - Christie's FIne Chinese Paintings HK May 26 27 2021

Lectures at Banyan Forum: Huang Daozhou (1585-1646) wrote his Small-Character Calligraphy in
Standard Script with exquisitely fine brush strokes, in the third month of
Story Behind Huang 1635, when he was lecturing in the country. According to his chronicle,
he resigned from his official post and left the capital (Beijing) in
Daozhou’s Small-Character 1632. Two years later, when he was living and teaching in Beishan of
Zhangpu county (in Fujian province), a judge of Zhangzhou named
Cao Weizhi invited him to teach at the Ziyan School in Zhangzhou.
Calligraphy in Standard Script Huang Daozhou was methodical in his instructional style: he would
teach the classics before the biographies and chronicles, the records
ᝇબࠑᜬ䢳 before histories; and he would answer his students’ questions in order
of increasing difficulties. His students complied these lessons which
took place over a year into 18 volumes titled Rongtan wenye (Lectures at
㷌㑆ݙǗܐ㑤Ջ㟵ᐷᜬᐒǘ Banyan Forum), which became fundamental in understanding Huang
Daozhou’s philosophy and scholarship. The characters “Rongtan wenye”
⡃㏽ can be found at the lower-left of the original handscroll, as this type
of paper was used during his tenure at Ziyan School.
The text of this work is included in Chapter Twenty-Two of
Huangzhang puji, where the analogy of the connectivity and
convergence of all the waterways is used to illustrate the importance

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