Page 73 - Sotheby's Qianlong Calligraphy Oct. 3, 2018

fig. 12
Shiqu baoji chubian, Fascicle three, volume one
圖十二
《石渠寶笈．初編》，卷三上

sign of endless longing, her voice, sharp with sorrow, growing recarved and reproduced during the Ming and Qing dynasties,
more prolonged. Then a swarm of milling spirits appears, although virtually all later copies can be traced to the two
calling companions, whistling to their mates, some sporting original brushed versions. Among the extant copies of the
in the clear current, some hovering over sacred isles, some version without Liu Gongquan’s colophon, the so-called Green
searching for bright pearls, some collecting kingfisher plumes. Jade version is the finest. This version is engraved on a stone
The goddess attends the two queens of Xiang in the south, slab discovered buried underground at Geling near West Lake
joins hands with Wandering Girl from the banks of the Han, in Hangzhou during the Wanli period of the Ming dynasty.
sighs that the Gourd Star has no spouse, laments that the Because of its dark colour, the stone slab is euphemistically
Herdboy must live alone. Lifting the rare fabric of her thin called Green Jade. The Green Jade copy of Thirteen Lines was
jacket, she makes a shield of her long sleeve, pausing in carved early. Most of the characters on it are intact, and the
hesitation, body nimbler than a winging…” 6 blemishes of the rock appear natural. Because the location
of its discovery was the site of Jia Sidao’s Banxiantang study,
It is generally thought that two brushed versions of Thirteen
Lines circulated during the Song and Yuan periods. One, people believed that it was carved by Jia and subsequently
on hemp-fibre paper from the Jin dynasty, was acquired was owned by Lu Menghe and Weng Songnian. During the
by calligrapher Zhao Mengfu during the early Yuan and Kangxi period, the Green Jade version entered the imperial
determined to be an authentic work. The other, on hard court, and after the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing,
yellow paper from the Tang dynasty and bearing colophons it began to circulate among the common people. After 1949,
by Liu Gongquan and others, was determined by Zhao to be a it was acquired by the PRC Government. Before the Cultural
Tang-dynasty copy, possibly a copy by Liu Gongquan himself. Revolution, it was housed in the Shanghai Museum, and
During the Song dynasty, both versions were engraved and currently it is in the Capital Museum in Beijing (fig. 5). There
reproduced as printed model books, which were themselves exists another stone engraving based on the same source
as the Green Jade version, known as the White Jade version.