Guǎngchuān huàbá 廣川畫跋
Colophons on Paintings by [Dǒng Yōu of] Guǎngchuān by 董逌 (Dǒng Yōu, fl. 1115–1127, 宋, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
The pictorial companion to the KR3h0028 Guǎngchuān shūbá. In six juàn of antiquarian colophons on paintings — chiefly figure-and-narrative paintings with extensive textual erudition — covering subjects from antiquity through the Five Dynasties and into the early Sòng. Notable colophons: Wǔhuáng wàngxiān tú, Dōngdānwáng qiānjiǎo lù tú, Qīxī tú, Bīngchē tú, Jiǔzhǔ tú, Lù Yǔ diǎnchá tú, Sòngqióng tú, Qǐqiǎo tú, Kànshū tú, Jīrǎng tú, Méigǔhuā tú, Wǔmǎ tú, Dài Sōng niú tú, Qínwáng jìnbǐng tú, Liúguā tú, Wáng Bōlì xiànmǎ tú. The book was rare in transmission: the WYG copy is from a Zhìzhèng 至正 yǐsì (1365) transcript by Sūn Dàomíng 孫道明 of Huátíng, made from a “late-Sòng student’s hand-copy” — i.e., the book was already in manuscript-only transmission by the late Yuán.
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Guǎngchuān huàbá in six juàn, by Dǒng Yōu of the Sòng. In the Xuānhé era, [Yōu] and Huáng Bósī were equally noted in evidential connoisseurship. Máo Jìn once cut his Shūbá KR3h0028 in ten juàn, but printed copies of the Huàbá are very rare. The present text is a transcription by Sūn Dàomíng of Huátíng dated Zhìzhèng yǐsì (1365), said to have been copied from a late-Sòng student’s manuscript — so already at that time there was no cut edition. The paper and ink have suffered over the years, but only the closing of juàn 6 has missing characters; the rest is complete. Ancient pictures mostly took as their subject narratives and emblems, so Yōu’s colophons are all evidential prose. On landscape painting he gives only one piece on Wáng Wéi, two on Fàn Kuān, three on Lǐ Chéng, two on Yān Sù, and one on a Shíjìshì — that is all. Of the others — Wǔhuáng wàngxiān, Dōngdānwáng qiānjiǎo lù, Qīxī, Bīngchē, Jiǔzhǔ, Lù Yǔ diǎnchá, Sòngqióng, Qǐqiǎo, Kànshū, Jīrǎng, Méigǔhuā, Wǔmǎ, Dài Sōng niú, Qínwáng jìnbǐng, Liúguā, Wáng Bōlì xiànmǎ — the evidential citations are uniformly meticulous. The Fēngshàn tú essay is not well grounded; the Jūyú tú one is over-allusive; the Fēnjìng tú one rigidly nonsensical; the Dìyù biànxiàng tú mistakes Lú Léngjiā as predating Wú Dàoyuán — these are minor faults, not enough to detract from the book. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 45 (1780), fifth month.
Abstract
The Guǎngchuān huàbá is the most important Northern Sòng work of evidential pictorial connoisseurship. Where Mǐ Fú’s KR3h0021 Huàshǐ records observed paintings as a connoisseur’s daybook, Dǒng Yōu writes ranged textual essays organised around the textual and iconographic content of the subject: each colophon is a piece of kǎozhèng in miniature, mobilising sources from the Wǔjīng to Hànshū glosses to clarify the painting’s narrative, identify obscure objects, or correct popular misattribution. The form was new in the Northern Sòng — Yōu and his contemporary Huáng Bósī 黃伯思 invented it. The work’s transmission has been extremely thin: by 1365 it was already manuscript-only, and the Sìkù edition rests on Sūn Dàomíng’s hand-copy. Yōu’s preference for narrative subjects (and his minimal treatment of landscape) reflects the Northern Sòng connoisseur’s continuing emphasis on the canonical figure-subject corpus inherited from Táng painting, an emphasis that the literati landscape movement was even then displacing.
Translations and research
- Hsu, Eileen Hsiang-ling. Dong Yōu and the Critical Tradition of Northern Song Calligraphy. PhD diss., Princeton, 1996.
- Murck, Alfreda. Poetry and Painting in Song China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000 (treats Dǒng’s Lù Yǔ diǎn-chá tú colophon).
- No standalone English-language monographic translation. Collected text in Zhōngguó shūhuà quánshū, vol. 1.
Other points of interest
The colophon on the Méigǔhuā tú (boneless-method flower painting) is one of the earliest theoretical statements on the méigǔ technique and is repeatedly cited in later Yuán and Míng flower-and-bird painting literature.