The Legend of Legendary Painting

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Though “The Mountain Dwelling on Fuchun River” has been a legend in the history of Chinese art for the past 660 years, this masterpiece became a buzz word on March 14, 2010 at the press conference in Beijing when Premier Wen Jiabao talked about Huang Gongwang, the painter, and the timeless masterpiece. The premier emoted that he hoped that the painting, one part in a collection of Zhejiang Museum and the other part in Taipei National Museum, would one day come together and display as a whole to the whole nation.

Huang Gongwang (1269-1354) is a legendary personage in the history. With a birth name Lu Jian, he was an orphan in Changshu in southern Jiangsu Province. The 10-year-old orphan was adopted by a 90-year-old man called Huang Le, a man from Yongjia, Zhejiang Province. The 90-year-old man was delighted to run into the orphan as if the boy had been a godsend to be his son. At the sight of the roaming boy, the old man said to himself that “the old man Huang has long since longed to have a son!” The first three words in Chinese thus became the name of the adopted son. Huang Le didn’t have the slightest idea that the name from his exclamation would be a big name in the history of Chinese art.

Huang Gongwang was a brilliant young scholar. At the age of 12, he participated in a county examination for talented boys. He read extensively and was a man of many arts and crafts. He became a government official at the age of 40, but the career was aborted after he was thrown into jail for something he didn’t do and he was almost sentenced to death. After he was set free, he decided to keep himself away from a bureaucrat career and become a recluse. Regional chronicles and scholarly essays say that he often spent a lot of time sitting and drinking in the wilderness. These records show that his heart and mind were merged with nature at that time.

He began at the age of 50 to learn how to paint under the guidance of Zhao Mengfu (1254―1322), a great calligrapher and master painter of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). At the age of 60, Huang became a Taoist with Ni Zan, a great painter of that time.

Huang came to Hangzhou and lived on the West Lake as a recluse. In 1347, the 79-year-old Huang visited Fuchun River near Hangzhou. This trip inspired the artist. He spent the next seven years painting “Mountain Dwelling on Chun River”. He died shortly after he completed his masterpiece.

This giant masterpiece was revolutionary and great in many senses. Scholars may write books on Huang’s innovative techniques. Poets may dwell on the beauty and the aesthetics of the long scroll. Critics may deconstruct dozens of peaks and hundreds of trees which show amazing diversity and sophistication.

Huang Gongwang gave the painting away to a Taoist friend, thus sending it on the legendary way of coming into and getting out of various private and royal collections over the period of 660 years.

Wu Hongyu, a private collector in Yixing, Jiangsu, decided on his deathbed to have the great painting burned so that the painting could go with him. When the old man was shutting his eyes and letting go his last breath, his nephew snatched the painting out of fire and threw in another painting into fire. The painting was saved but it broke into two parts.

In 1652, a descendent of the Wu family called Wu Jigu had the two-part painting. He got the painting repaired carefully. The long section was meticulously fixed as if it had never suffered a fire disaster. This part was named as Scroll of Useless Master, the religious name of the Taoist who had received it as a gift from Huang Gongwang. The short section was simply named Remaining Mountains.

The Scroll of Useless Master somehow made its way into the royal collection of the Qing Dynasty. It was shipped to Taiwan in 1948 with nearly one million cultural treasures from the Forbidden City in Beijing. The Remaining Mountains was in private collections over centuries. Wu Hufan, a modern artist, acquired Remaining Mountains from a private collector at the cost of an antique bronze artifact. After 1949, Sha Menghai, a great calligrapher in Zhejiang, heard of the piece in the private collection of Wu Hufan. Sha tried hard to persuade Wu to donate the painting to the state. Sha Menghai succeeded. In 1956, the painting came to Zhejiang Museum. Today, this painting is the most valuable treasure of the museum.

Nobody knows exactly how long the original painting was. Originally it was painted on six pieces of rice paper. But we know about the usual size of rice paper for painting. So calculated on the basis of the standard size of paper, the original painting was probably 6.6 meters long and about 0.3 meter tall.

The Remaining Mountains measures 31.8 centimeters high and 51.4 meters long. The Scroll of Useless Master is 33 centimeters high and 636.9 centimeters long.

Getting the two parts of the masterpiece together is a dream for many people across the Taiwan Straits. In July 1999, 30 some painters and calligraphers gathered on the Fuchun River and jointly recreated the masterpiece.

In 2005, Liu Chengle, President of Hong Kong Phoenix Television, visited Taiwan several times in a bid to get the two parts exhibit together at an appropriate venue. The feedback was that the Remaining Mountains could come to Taiwan but the Scroll of Useless Master would be off the table for any talk for an unspecified period to come.

He Shuifa, a famed painter of Zhejiang, proposed at the national CPPCC session in 2010 to exhibit the two parts in 2010 in Fuyang where Huang Gongwang visited the river.

On March 20, 2010, a set of six special stamps named “Mountain Dwelling on the Fuchun River” were launched at Fuyang after a big ceremony. At the ceremony, nine painters from the mainland and Taiwan jointly created a 15-meter-long new version of the masterpiece.

Today, Remaining Mountains at Zhejiang Museum is stored in a display cabinet in which temperature and humidity stay constant, quietly and patiently waiting for the reunification with the other part on the other side of the Strait.