清朝

Qing Dynasty

In the Qing dynasty, epigraphy flourished and stele studies gained new importance, making seal, clerical, and northern stele scripts major sources for innovation. Evidential scholarship and inscription research helped form a weighty, archaic style.

Shang Dynasty
Western Zhou
Spring and Autumn Period
Qin Dynasty
Western Han Dynasty
Eastern Han Dynasty
Three Kingdoms Period
Eastern Jin Dynasty
Northern and Southern Dynasties
Sui Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
Northern Song Dynasty
Southern Song Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
Qing Dynasty
Modern Era
Showing items
1
to
12
of
136

Qing Dynasty

Zheng Banqiao: Hard to Be Truly Confused

Zheng Banqiao's ?Hard to Be Truly Confused? is tied to a well-known anecdote. While visiting Yunfeng Mountain in Laizhou to see the Zheng Gong Stele, he stayed with an old man who called himself a ?confused old man.? The man owned an enormous treasured inkstone and asked Zheng to inscribe it. Zheng wrote the four characters ?Nan De Hu Tu? and sealed them with his famous signature line. The old man then added his own inscription, revealing himself to be no ordinary person but likely a cultivated retired official, which earned Zheng's deep admiration. Zheng responded with another reflection about the difficulty of moving from cleverness into a higher state of generous simplicity. The exchange later became famous. Zheng Banqiao's calligraphy blends regular, cursive, seal, and clerical elements into what he called ?six-and-a-half script,? a highly original style unlike anything seen before.

Qing Dynasty

Fu Shan: Seven-Character Quatrain in Cursive Script

Fu Shan was a noted scholar, painter, calligrapher, and physician of the late Ming and early Qing periods. Although the early Qing authorities repeatedly tried to recruit him, he firmly refused office and lived in retirement. His calligraphy was rooted in Yan Zhenqing, and both his regular and cursive script show powerful effort and a theory he summarized as preferring awkwardness to cleverness, plainness to prettiness, ruggedness to slickness, and directness to arrangement. This banner is a representative example of late Ming wild cursive: free, elegant, forceful, rich in change, seemingly effortless, yet internally rhythmic and full of natural beauty. It is now in the Shanghai Museum.

Qing Dynasty

Wang Duo: Seven-Regulated-Verse in Running Script

Wang Duo was a leading calligrapher of the late Ming and early Qing periods, celebrated for regular, running, and cursive script, with his greatest achievement in running-cursive writing. This running-script seven-regulated-verse piece comes from Gu Zeng's ?Feng He Chun Ri Chu Yuan Zhu Mu Ying Ling? and is regarded as one of Wang Duo's representative works. Rooted in the Wei and Jin tradition, drawing running-cursive strength from the Two Wangs, regular-script structure from Zhong Yao, and further nourishment from Yan Zhenqing and Mi Fu, the work shows the breadth of his study. Wang Duo famously argued that unless one truly penetrates ancient steles, one's method can never become genuinely classical.

Malaysia Chinese Calligraphy Stone Gallery

马来西亚
中华人文碑林

Find your peace within the words, and take its echo with you.

Copyright © 2025 中华人文碑林. All Rights Reserved.