Couplet in clerical script

Object Details

• Artist

  Gui Fu (1736-1805)

• Label

  No one around, the moon is about to set;

  Buddha is here, the pines do not speak.

  Clerical script for ninth "elder brother" Xiaosong [Huang Yi, 1744-1801] to correct, as we are presently together in Jining [Shandong Province]. Casually copied on the sixteenth day of the eighth lunar month in the guichou year [September 20, 1793], Yumen Gui Fu.

  Gui Fu was an important eighteenth-century scholar of ancient writing and extended this interest to his own calligraphy and seal carving. He was especially admired for his works in clerical script, as seen here, which he studied from the inscriptions on stone memorial tablets dating to the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 C.E.). In this couplet, he used thick, strong lines of even width to recreate the squat, horizontally compressed characters that are commonly found in such carved inscriptions. As indicated in three columns of running script below each line of the main text, Gui dedicated this couplet to his younger friend Huang Yi, who was also a renowned calligrapher and seal carver, as well as a fellow enthusiast of ancient styles of script.

• Provenance

  To 1997

  Robert Hatfield Ellsworth (born 1929), New York City, to 1997

  From 1997

  Freer Gallery of Art, given by Robert Hatfield Ellsworth in 1997 [1]

  Notes:

  [1] The total gift from the Ellsworth collection consists of nearly three-hundred objects (F1997.42-.85 and F1998.83-294).

  All Chinese calligraphy in the proposed gift were published in Mr. Ellsworth's Later Chinese Painting and Calligraphy: 1800-1950 vol. 3 (New York: Random House, 1986) (see Curatorial Note 1, Joseph Chang, May 19, 1998, in the object record).

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Palaces and Pavilions: Grand Architecture in Chinese Painting (September 29, 2002 to March 30, 2003)

• Previous custodian or owner

  Robert Hatfield Ellsworth (1929-2014)

• Origin

  China

• Credit Line

  Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art

• Type

  Calligraphy

• Restrictions and Rights

  Usage Conditions Apply

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1790s

• Name

  Ellsworth, Robert Hatfield

• Place

  China

• Topic

  Art, Couplet, Chinese Art, Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911), Robert Hatfield Ellsworth collection, Clerical script

• Culture

  Chinese

• Object Type

  Calligraphy (visual works)