Page 14 - Christie's Fine Chinese Paintings March 19 2019 Auction

Li Dongyang, whose sobriquet was Binzhi and style name Xiya, was awarded the jinshi degree
in 1464 of the Tianshun era. He served in the court for nearly ffty years and was regarded as
a virtuous and wise prime minister. As a child, he displayed a special talent in calligraphy. He
initially learned calligraphy by emulating the great master Yan Zhenqing (709-785). While
he frmly grasped the essence of Yan’s hand, he also developed a style of his own and excelled
in large cursive and seal scripts. His contemporaries praised his work as “unparalleled.”
Furthermore, he was also a master in authentication and connoisseurship of paintings. No one
else in the middle Ming dynasty succeeded in becoming as accomplished in so many felds as he
did.

Measuring ten meters in length, Poems on Planting Bamboo consists of fourteen poems and essays
written in standard, running, cursive, and seal scripts. Li Dongyang completed it in 1516 for his
nephew by marriage Zhang Ruji. Both the artist and the recipient were very fond of bamboo
and often planted them together.
The provenance of this work can be traced back to the late Ming so that its history spans nearly
four hundred years and includes many important collectors virtually without interruption.
Among the earliest are the collector seals of the famed Qing dynasty collector An Qi (1683-?).
One of his seals appears on each of the six paper seams and the handscroll was recorded in An
Qi’s treatise on paintings, Moyuan huiguan lu. It is particularly rare for such a long handscroll to
be well preserved for over fve hundred years without suffering damage or cutting, with only
four characters in the frontispiece and a poem of Weng Luxu missing. The main reason for its
present excellent condition is that most of the time this work was in the careful possession of
experienced connoisseurs: from Weng Fanggang (1733-1818) to Ye Zhishen (1779-1863), as well
as his son Ye Mingfeng (1811-1858). All of them were erudite literati interested in antiques and
skilled in calligraphy. The Ye family had a strong relationship with Weng Fanggang and a great
number of Weng’s treasures went into their collection. This handscroll was later owned by the
Qing imperial family member and court offcial Aixin Jueluo Bao Xi (1871-1942) and by the
great 20th century painter Zhang Daqian (1899-1983), whose seals can be found on the work.
Zhang Daqian further inscribed his response, calling this “the most divine work as it contains
authentic poems and calligraphy by Li Dongyang.” His admiration for and attachment to this
handscroll is evident as one of his seals reads “whichever direction I go, there is only taking this
piece with me and no possibility of separation.” Only a truly important work of art could have
compelled a great master such as Zhang Daqian to express such a strong sentiment.
The late cultural historian and former researcher at the Palace Museum Zhu Jiajin (1914-2003),
son of collector and former committee member of the Palace Museum Zhu Wenjun (1882-
1937), wrote a research article based on the inscriptions and seals on this work and family
record. According to him, the original recipient of Fourteen Poems on Planting Bamboo
was Li Dongyang’s nephew Zhang Ruji. Zhu Jianjin, whose father Zhu Wenjun was once the
owner of this handscroll, also constructed a genealogy of ownership: around the Ming dynasty
Tianqi period (1620-1627) it was in the possession of Xu Bo, a literary fgure of the late Ming
and early Qing period. The next owner was Hong Chu (1605-1672), an anti-Manchu literati
Zen practitioner. It was owned by the great literati collector An Qi (1683-?) around the Kangxi
period (1661-1722). Weng Fangang (1733-1818) had possession by guisi year of the Qianlong
reign (1773) and it went to Aixinjueluo Baoxi (1871-1942) around the Guangxu period (1875-
1908). By 1921 it was owned by the Zhu Wenjun and presumably went to the collector Wong
Nan-p’ing (1924-1985) sometime thereafter.