Qīnghé shūhuà biǎo 清河書畫表
Tabular Register of the Qīnghé Calligraphy-and-Painting Collection by 張丑 (Zhāng Chǒu, 1577–1635, 明, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
A one-juàn tabular summary by Zhāng Chǒu of his family’s accumulated calligraphy and painting collection over seven generations. The book uses time-period as the jīng (warp) and lineage-generation as the wěi (weft): the first row records pieces held by Zhāng’s high-ancestor Yuánsù 元素, the second row by his great-uncle Wéiqìng 維慶 and great-grandfather Zǐhé 子和, the third row by his grandfather Yuēzhī 約之 and great-uncle Chéngzhī 誠之, the fourth row by his father Màoshí 茂實, the fifth row by his elder brother Yǐshéng 以繩, the sixth row by Zhāng himself, and the seventh row by his nephew Dànjiā 誕嘉. The table covers pieces from the Jìn down to the Míng, totalling 81 named artists, 49 calligraphies and 115 paintings. The pieces are frequently of famous provenance — Zhāng’s high-ancestor had studied under Shěn Dù 沈度 and Shěn Càn 沈粲, his great-grandfather had been an associate of Shěn Zhōu 沈周, and his grandfather and father were affines of Wén Zhēngmíng 文徵明 and his sons. As Zhāng explains in his self-preface, the table was drawn up after the family’s collection had been “sold off and dispersed” — it is a retrospective list of names rather than a current inventory.
Tiyao
We have respectfully examined: Qīnghé shūhuà biǎo in one juàn, by Zhāng Chǒu of the Míng — recording the calligraphies and paintings accumulated by his family across the generations. Chǒu states in his self-preface that the founding ancestor, styled the Zhēnguān chǔshì 真關處士, already collected calligraphy and painting, including pieces by Huáng Tíngjiān 黃庭堅 and Liú Sōngnián 劉松年, all now scattered and lost. The table’s arrangement uses time-period as the warp and lineage-generation as the weft. Row 1 holds the pieces of his high-ancestor Yuánsù 元素; row 2 those of his great-uncle Wéiqìng 維慶 and great-grandfather Zǐhé 子和; row 3 those of his grandfather Yuēzhī 約之 and great-uncle Chéngzhī 誠之; row 4 those of his father Màoshí 茂實; row 5 those of his elder brother Yǐshéng 以繩; row 6 those Chǒu himself collected; row 7 those of his nephew Dànjiā 誕嘉. The pieces range upward to the Jìn and downward to the Míng: 81 artists, 49 calligraphies, 115 paintings. Many are famous pieces, because his high-ancestor had been a pupil of Shěn Dù and Shěn Càn, his great-grandfather had moved in the same circles as Shěn Zhōu, and his grandfather and father were affines of Wén Zhēngmíng and his sons. Chǒu thereby came to be especially famous as a connoisseur. However, by his own preface, by the time he made the table the family fortunes had collapsed and the collection had been entirely sold off; the table merely records the names of the lost pieces. Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), twelfth month.
Abstract
The Qīnghé shūhuà biǎo is the tabular complement to Zhāng Chǒu’s narrative connoisseurial works KR3h0055 Qīnghé shūhuà fǎng and KR3h0056 Zhēnjī rìlù. The work is dating-relative: it must post-date the Shūhuà fǎng of 1616 (the work is referenced inside the Shūhuà fǎng) and pre-date Zhāng’s death in 1635, with a likely period of composition in the 1620s once the family’s fortunes had declined. As a genealogical-cum-bibliographical document the Biǎo is the principal source for the social-historical reading of the Zhāng family’s seven-generation connoisseurial practice on the Kūnshān side of Sūzhōu Jiāngnán, and for documenting Zhāng’s affinal ties to the Wén family, the principal late-Míng centre of the Wú-school lineage. The Sìkù editors recognize that this Biǎo and the parallel KR3h0058 Shūhuà jiànwén biǎo may have been drafted before the Shūhuà fǎng and Zhēnjī rìlù, since the pieces listed as “eyewitnessed” do not consistently agree with the latter works’ targeted itemization — but the recipe-list form makes them dependent on those works for evidentiary weight.
Translations and research
- Clunas, Craig. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Cambridge: Polity, 1991.
- Wáng Liánqǐ 王連起. Sòng-dài shūhuà jiànbié yánjiū. Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 2003.
- No standalone Western-language study of the Qīnghé shūhuà biǎo.