Page 6 - Chiense Silver and Gold, 2012, J.J. Lally, New York

Images of the R ed Cliff in

Southern Song P ainting and Decorative Arts

by Masaaki Itakura
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he body of literary works, calligraphy, and paintings by the great

North ern Song scholar-official Su Shi (1036–1101; courtesy name
T Zizhan, sobriquet Dongpo Jushi) have had immeasurable influence
down the ages. Although Su Shi was drawn into the vortex of factional rupture
and ulti mately exiled, first to Huangzhou and later to Hainan Island, his celeb-
rity was universal from his own time on, and his literary fame even reverber-

ated beyond China. After his death, the court of Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–
1125) issued a prohibition of works by Su, who had been a conservative during
a period dominated by the New Policies party (xin fa dang). Despite this, his
writings, calligraphy, and paintings were beloved and fervently collected
among scholar-bureaucrats. The Southern Song period saw both the restora-
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tion of the Con ser va tive party (jiu fa dang) and a great upsurge of interest in
Su’s literary works.
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Best known among Su Shi’s literary works are his first and second “Prose-
poems to the Red Cliff” (respectively, Qian chibi fu and Hou chibi fu), which
he wrote in 1082 during his exile in Huangzhou (Huanggang, Hubei). These
rhapsodic essays were composed during trips to the Red Cliff (Chibi), the first
in autumn, on the sixteenth day of the seventh month, and the second three
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months later in winter, on the fifteenth day of the tenth month. According to
Su’s “Preface to the Red Cliff Prose-poems” (Shuqian chibi fu juan), owned by
the National Palace Museum in Taipei, he avoided circulating the work out of
fear that it would be seen as politically motivated. Nonetheless, “Red Cliff” ex-

hibits the poet’s great malleability and quickly became Su’s most representa-
tive work, clearly evidenced by the existence of Qiao Zhongchang’s Illustration
to the Second Prose-poem to the Red Cliff, a handscroll produced shortly after
Su’s death and owned by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (figure 1). Pictorial-
izations of “Red Cliff” were commonplace by the end of the late Northern Song
and can be divided into two broad categories: narrative pictorializations in

Cat. 24. A Chased Silver ‘Red Cliff’ Pictorial Dish (detail), Song Dynasty, A.D. 13th Century (Figure 3 in this essay)