Deng Shiru (1743-1805), whose first name was Yan and Shiru, avoided the Jiaqing Emperor's taboo, so he changed his name to Xing, and later changed his name to Nianbo. Because he lived at the foot of Wangong Mountain, he was also named Jiyou. Taoist, Wanbaishan native, Fengshui fisherman, Longshan woodcutter, a member of the Deng family in Bailinfan, Huaining County, Anhui Province (now Bailin Village, Wuheng Township, Yixiu District, Anqing City), seal engraver and calligrapher of the Qing Dynasty, Deng School The founder of seal cutting.

Representative Works

Deng Shiru was a giant in stele calligraphy in the Qing Dynasty and was good at four-body calligraphy. He first learned seal script from Li Si and Li Yangbing, and later studied "Chan Guo Mountain Stele", "Sangong Mountain Stele", "Tianfa Shen Prophecy Stele", stone drum inscriptions, Yi artifacts, and Han steles. He used the official method to make seals, breaking through the barriers of jade seals that had existed for thousands of years, and opened up a new world for seal scripts in the Qing Dynasty. His seal script has vertical and horizontal strokes and slightly square fonts, which are close to those of Qin and Han Dynasty tiles and Han Dynasty stele foreheads. The official script came out of the Han Dynasty steles. It is compact, strong in appearance, and majestic. It also made the official script of the Qing Dynasty completely new. The regular script is based on the tablets of the Six Dynasties, as well as the body styles of Ouyang Xun and his son. The writing style is decisive and the characters are tightly knotted, giving it a vigorous and vigorous style. Cursive script mainly absorbs the cursive techniques of Jin and Tang Dynasties, and the writing style is slow and elegant. The large-character cursive script has a broad atmosphere and a vast artistic conception. Looking at the four styles of calligraphy, seal script has the greatest achievements, followed by regular script, running script and cursive script. Deng Shiru was also a seal carver and founded the Deng School among the Anhui Schools. He used small seal characters to seal, emphasizing the meaning of the brushwork. His style was vigorous, simple, vigorous and graceful, and his calligraphy and seal cutting complemented each other. Deng Shiru's seal has the characteristic that "a sparse place can be used for horse racing, and a dense place cannot be ventilated".

People at that time spoke highly of Deng Shiru's calligraphy skills, saying that he was "excellent in all four parts and ranked first in the country." His calligraphy was most outstanding in seal script, and the success of seal script lies in small seal script. His Xiaozhuan script, based on Si and Bing's masters, is slightly longer in structure, but creatively blends the official script writing style into it. He boldly uses long edges and soft brush strokes, and ups and downs, which greatly enriches the brushwork of seal script, especially the seal script in his later years. , the lines are round and thick, powerful and boundless, reaching the state of transformation, creating a model of seal script for the Qing Dynasty, and making an immortal contribution to the development of seal script art. Official script has benefited greatly from long-term immersion in the practice of Han steles. It can write official scripts in seal script, and with the power of Wei steles, its style is naturally unique. The regular script did not start from Tang regular script, but traced its origins and directly adopted the Wei stele. It mostly used square brushes, and the movement of the strokes contained the official meaning. The structure did not seek to be fair by the method of horizontal light and vertical weight, left low and right high, and elegant. The ancient, majestic and simple architecture is incompatible with the current customs of the pavilions, showing the spirit of courage to explore.

Liu Yong and Lu Xixiong: "Nothing like this has been done for hundreds of years."

Cao Wenqi: "This Jiangnan scholar, Mr. Deng, has all four styles of calligraphy. He is the first in the country."

Bao Shichen's "Yizhou Shuangji": the first in the divine quality.

Zhao Zhiqian: "The Shanren are the first among the people in the country, and the Shanren are the first. The official script is the first; the Shanren seal script comes from the official script, and it is said that it is not as good as Shao Wen. However, this is because Shao Wen is more and more, and those who are good at Yi cannot express Yi. The poem must be poetry, and it must be known that he is not a poet. "

Sha Menghai's "Calligraphy in the Past Three Hundred Years": "The calligrapher in the Qing Dynasty who was publicly recommended as an outstanding scholar was not Liu Yong, a scholar of the East Pavilion, nor Weng Fanggang, a scholar of the cabinet. It just happened to be Deng Shiru in the cane shoes."

Deng's works

Inscription works

Deng from Bailin Banner at the foot of Dalong Mountain in Huaining County, Anhui Province. In the family's main house, there is a long couplet with 146 characters of "Dragon Gate" written in regular script, namely:

Canghai Sun, Chicheng Xia, Emei Snow, Wuxia Cloud, Dongting Moon, Peng Li's Marriage, Xiaoxiang Rain, Wuyi Peak, Lushan Waterfall, combined with the wonders of the universe, are painted on the walls of my house;

Shaoling Poems, Mojie Paintings, Zuo Chuanwen, Ma Qian Shi, Xue Tao's Notes, Youjun Posts, Nanhua Sutra , Xiangru Fu, Qu Zili Sao, collect ancient and modern exquisite arts, and put them in my mountain window.

This couplet, signed "Inscribed on Bishan Bookstore", was written and written by Deng Shiru, a famous calligrapher and seal engraver in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. This couplet is magnificent and unique in conception, just like what Liu Xie, a literary critic of the Southern Dynasties, said about the magic of "seeing thousands of miles" and "thinking for thousands of years".

The scenery in the first couplet is colorful; the text in the second couplet is beautiful.

The upper and lower Qi meridians are connected and completed in one go. The scenery is typical, the literature is exquisite, the language is elegant, and the meaning is profound. It is a masterpiece of pairings and a brilliant couplet.

The reason why this couplet is so popular is, in addition to the above, also related to the author's good use of Liejin rhetorical techniques.

Lijin rhetoric is a sentence composed of a noun or noun-centered naming structure. There are no adjectives and predicates, but it can describe scenes and emotions; there is no verb predicate, but it can describe emotions.

Living in the world: old heirloom books. ——Inscribed on the stele gallery of Hanshan Temple in Suzhou

The cause lasts through the ages; the fragrance is recommended to all seasons. ——Ink mark

The autumn water of Nanhua is on the seat; the spring mountain of Beiyuan is between the screens. ——Self Title

Where thousands of flowers bloom, there are thousands of feet of pines; a flock of birds sings like a crane. ——Self-titled

When you open a book, your mind wanders for thousands of years; when you look at the curtain, your heart is in the mountains. ——Self Title

It is the third month after the realization of a good book; it is the fourth spring when a good friend comes. Self-titled

Walking through rivers and mountains, I shed two lines of tears from the poor people; Facing the wind and facing the moon, I always cherish the heart of an old friend. ——Wan Cao Wenxi

There are several layers of strange stones around, and the moonlight is in the sky, like looking into an ancient stream; there are pines hundreds of feet high on the ground, and the green shade covers the sun, and strangers come every now and then. ——Inscribed on Xiaojinshan Thatched Cottage in Slender West Lake, Yangzhou

There are eight or nine thatched cottages, fishing for rain and farming smoke, one must believe that being rich is worse than being poor, and being noble is worse than being humble;

There are tens of millions of words in bamboo books, and they are filled with words. Flowers make wine, and you will know that you can enjoy yourself in peace and quiet, and be free and clear.

——Talking about feelings

Tolerate others but be insulted, to be careful but to be sick, to drink a little but be sad, to think too little but be dreaming, to plant flowers but be vulgar, to burn incense but be filthy;

*** To replenish labor, stay alone to replenish deficiency, use frugally to replenish poverty, do good deeds to replenish mistakes, calm anger and replenish energy, be silent and replenish troubles.

——Self-inscribed Thatched Cottage

What’s the point of having a seven-foot-long body with no wealth or fame?

What kind of clothes and coffin does this piece of rotten skin need? It would be better to throw it into the wilderness and weeds. Wouldn't it be happy?

——Self-preparation

Seal cutting

"The sound of the river breaks the bank thousands of feet", "I can't create the original meaning of the calligraphy", "The Day of Obscenely Reading Ancient Prose" "Hearing Strange Words", "Home in the Four Spirit Mountains and Rivers", "Meetings with Ancient Thoughts", "Songs and Ink Dances", "The City Grows Every Day", "Lingshi Mountain Grows", "End of Spring", "Half Thousand Pavilions" "The Occasionally Existing Seal Engravings of Wanbai Mountain People" (Text and Pictures)

Calligraphy

"Poems of Traveling to the Five Gardens", "Seal Script Scroll", "Seal Script Hall", "Four Screens of Official Script" , "Seven-Character Couplet in Official Script", "Excerpts from Official Script and the Heart Carving the Dragon", "Chen Ji He Shu"

Poems

"Dengdai"

Dai Zhi The majestic Bing Jie Yan, Jun Zhe walks straight up. Nothing is limited except the sky, which is not as high as a human being.

Qilu was lost in the clouds and smoke in a blink of an eye, and all the mountains were entrusted with the title of Shircao. Don't be surprised by the traces of wind and dust when respecting the rock. There are only a few cloth robes in the ancient world.

"Manuscript of a Manuscript of a Manuscript of a Crane from the Wanbaishan Mountain" Completed

Deng Shiru, a resident of the Wanbaishan Mountain, paused and took the letter as a starting point to tell the story of sending a crane. The owner of this crane has enough time to prove that he is one hundred and thirty years old and has been in the family of Gongqing for four years. According to Wanling Zhang Hanzhai Taishi Tao's "Ancient Crane Poetry", in the Jinling vassal office engraved by Sun Gong, the Prime Minister of southern Yunnan, it is stated that this crane first lived in the Jiang family in Changshu, then in the Shen family in Wuxing, and later in the Xu family in Deqing. Yuan Litang of the Ministry of Agriculture in Jingkou paid a thousand gold to hire him to the Thirty-Six Peaks Mountain Hall. There are only a handful of people who are more than 130 years old. The years before that cannot be obtained and examined. The mountain people visited Yuan Gong's house for many years. Tingji, the son of the Ministry of Agriculture, ordered He to address the mountain people and said: "This is your Lord." He said that the crane was suitable for the mountain people, so he gave it to the mountain people. The mountain people are old and gentle, so it is a good idea to have this as their wife. In the autumn of the first year of Jiaqing, a boat passed Jinling. Sun Zhongcheng was pleased with it and wanted to hire cranes from the mountain people. He also gave two gray cranes to the mountain people as gifts. This puffin is not a crane. Being a slave to a crane, the crane will not accept it. However, he carried my crane back home. The mountain folk's houses were built on the walls with many index fingers, and each inkstone had a living wife in all directions. They were afraid that the crane would be harmed by the savages, so they chose a place and sent the crane to the monk's house in Jixianguan. Although the Zen room is desolate, the trees are lush, the bamboo trees are green, the passes are dangerous, and the mountains and rocks are steep. It is the main road to Tianqu and the dragon vein of Wancheng.

Cranes are here, cranes are here, don't wait for me. One day, we can travel together in the dark desert with clear water and green mountains. Are you going to leave so quickly?

Art Appreciation

Introduction

Deng Shiru: (1743---1805), whose original name was Yan, whose courtesy name was Shiru, also known as Nuncho, also known as Wanbaishanren, also known as Wanbai, Gu Huanzi, Youji Taoist, Fengshui fisherman, Longshan woodcutter, etc. A native of Huaining, Anhui. Some people classify him as the Wan School, and more people respect him as the "Deng School" because of his outstanding contribution in the history of seal cutting.

Deng Shiru's family was poor when he was young, and his social status was low throughout his life. He said: "I never tried to study when I was young. I experienced hardships and hardships, and I learned about everything. At the age of thirteen or four, I secretly rejoiced in the book. At the age of twenty , my grandfather brought me to Shouzhou, and he was able to teach me how to travel and eat in the rivers and lakes, and not treat others as literate people." Such a "commoner" who did not read much has grown into a great artist. Unswerving faith, tenacious will and hard training. After he was seventeen years old, he began to support himself by engraving books. After turning 30, through the introduction of friends, I successively met friends such as the Mei Miao brothers in Nanjing. I looked through the rare epigraphy and stone books collected by the Mei family. I always copied every famous monument and calligraphy more than a hundred times. To this end, I worked hard from dawn to dusk and worked hard for the future. The art of seal cutting laid a solid foundation for calligraphy. Therefore, people at that time rated his four-body calligraphy as the first in the Qing Dynasty.

Deng Shiru’s era was when the Anhui and Zhejiang schools were dominating the seal world, but he was never satisfied with the achievements of his predecessors, and based on his own strength and calligraphy, he achieved " "The book comes from the printing, and the seal comes from the book", which broke the traditional pattern of official seal cutting in Han seals. It was the first to use small seals and characters on the forehead of seal cuttings, which broadened the scope of seal cutting funding and formed its own strong and graceful style in seal cutting. The style rose majestically in the seal world at that time, and it can be said that it formed a tripod with the Anhui and Zhejiang schools. Deng Shiru's heroic style has always influenced Bao Shichen, Wu Rangzhi, Zhao Zhiqian, Wu Zi, Hu Shu, Xu Sangeng and others in the same period. In the history of the development of seal cutting art, Deng Shiru is an outstanding master. Unfortunately, few of his original stones have survived, such as "Wanbai Mountain People's Seal Engravings Occasionally Completed", "Wanbai Mountain People's Seals", "Deng Shiru's Seals and Preservations", etc.

Introduction to the work

"The river flows with sound, and the shore is broken thousands of feet" is a sentence from Su Shi's "Hou Chibi Fu", which is one of Deng Shiru's masterpieces. The most important thing to avoid in artistic conception is uniformity and dullness. In calligraphy theory, he once proposed the aesthetic concept of "the sparse parts of the characters can make the horse move, and the dense parts cannot let the air pass through". This square seal can be said to be a vivid embodiment of this concept. The two characters "flow and break" are written in complex form to increase their density, so as to contrast the sparseness with denseness. The word "jiang" echoes the three characters "an, thousand, and feet". The writing style is open, and the large and wide land echoes the word "broken". In addition, the denseness of "flow, you, and sound" forms a sharp contrast. His The use of the knife is different from that of the Anhui and Zhejiang schools, but the knife is like a pen, smooth and graceful, carving out his strong and graceful style.

"My calligraphy is incomparable". It can be said that the carving method of fine white script is unprecedented. Jia Jiazuo developed the carving method of round Zhu script in the Song and Yuan Dynasties to this kind of fine white script engraving method. The square and round twists and turns of the Chinese characters are completely randomly matched according to the form of the seal. The lines of this kind of white writing can best reflect the interest of his calligraphy and the flavor of using a knife as a pen.

"Reading ancient Chinese obscenely, hearing strange words every day", the style is the same as that of the above seal, although the knife skills are the same. The upper seal is not as strong as the upper seal, but the composition is carefully planned. The eight characters in the whole seal are divided into three lines. The middle row is sparse and the left and right are dense. This is the characteristic of this square seal.

"Home is on the four sides." "Ling Shan Shui Jian" is fully printed with seven characters, just like the book. The composition of this seal is exactly the opposite of the previous seal. The middle is dense and the left and right sides are sparse. The dense parts do not make people feel suffocated, and the sparse parts are more than enough. The painting master Huang Binhong was influenced by this. There is also a saying in his painting theory that "the sparseness allows the horse to move, the denseness allows the wind to pass through"

The two seals of "Lingshi Mountain Long" and "Chunya" echo each other in diagonal sparseness and density, and contrast with each other in vermillion and white, all printed with pen. The ink is full and full of roundness and simplicity. In comparison, the white text seal with additional columns in "Chunya" has a slight skill in seal cutting. Art is "operating within a square inch, and appreciating it down to the smallest detail, judging its sparseness and density, and distinguishing its beauty." Therefore, "calligraphy and painting have the same origin, and the reality of calligraphy is deeper than painting, and the epigraphy is deeper than calligraphy."

Therefore, "without subtle artistic accomplishment, it is not enough to speak." These incisive insights should have profound significance for our understanding of Deng Shiru’s art.

Interpretation of calligraphy

Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, seal script as a whole has gradually gone into silence, and calligraphers who are good at seal script have become like morning stars. It was not until the Qing Dynasty, with the rise of epigraphy and textual criticism, that the spring of the revival of seal script ushered in. During the Qianjia period, Deng Shiru came out, which completely broke the deadlock of the sluggish seal script and opened up a new dimension. Deng Shiru changed the seal writing method of the past hundreds of years, making full use of the specialties of the brush to express the meaning of the seal script, making the strokes of the strokes, starting and closing of the writing more varied, and structurally breaking the traditional style of the past. This is a fixed pattern that affects people everywhere and becomes a trend.

Deng Shiru, whose first name was Yan, whose courtesy name was Shiru, and whose nickname was Nhanbo, was from Huaining, Anhui. He lived in commoner clothes all his life and supported himself by writing and engraving seals. He has studied calligraphy and seal cutting intensively throughout his life, and his achievements in seal writing are the highest and he has made groundbreaking contributions. The seal script is based on "Stone Drum Inscriptions", "Taishan Carved Stones", "Yishan Stele", and "Kaimu Stone Que", and integrates the graceful and fluttering meaning of the Han Dynasty stele forehead. The square and round characters are interchangeable, the posture is novel, the writing is deep and majestic, and graceful. His body posture is generous, his pen is flexible and full of changes, and his bones are strong, eliminating the old habits of being rigid, weak, and monotonous. Seal script came in from Li, and Li came out from Seal, forming a style of its own. After the Qing Dynasty, all seal calligraphers were influenced by him. It can be said that the artistic style of seal calligraphy has been rich and colorful for more than 200 years, and everyone has emerged in large numbers. This glorious scene actually started with Deng Shiru.

"Deng Shiru's Seal Script Book" was written after the first year of Jiaqing. The pen is as powerful as silk, the bones are as strong as cotton wrapped in iron, the body is calm, and the writing is like silkworms spinning silk. Especially it incorporates the use of official script as seal script. Meaning, it can be regarded as the representative work of Deng Shiru's ink writing handed down from generation to generation. When studying this post, you should carefully observe and deeply understand the changing characteristics of his brushwork. As far as the rising and closing are concerned, there are both reverse rising and stopping, which are reserved and reserved, and there are also reverse incoming and flat out, which are relaxed and smooth. The strokes of his arc drawings may be made using the lifting and turning method to achieve roundness or smoothness, or the sudden and folding method may be used to demonstrate the squareness and strength. These subtle changes in the use of pens must be done at the last moment, and must not be made overly large during temporary practice. It must be done as Sun Guoting said, "Those who observe are more refined, and those who imitate are more valuable." In terms of seal characters, "Deng Shiru Seal Script Book" strives to pursue a uniform whitening method, thus making each seal character unique. It appears stable and serene, but in the blank space, the legs hang down and the tail is trailing, thus forming a unity of opposites between sparseness and solidity, emptiness and richness. While handling the uniform and dense distribution of white, we must also pay full attention to the parallel, symmetrical, embracing and back-to-back relationship of the lines. In addition, in order to copy Deng Shiru's seal script copybook well, the uneven changes in lines are also an important aspect that cannot be ignored. The uneven arrangement of small seal lines is often the key to creating vividness. Wang Shuyun of the Qing Dynasty said: "The seal script has three essentials: one is round, the other is thin, and the third is jagged. Round means strength, thin means plump, and jagged means neat. If you lose one of the three, you will be a slave to the book!" This should be ours! Things to keep in mind when writing Xiaozhuan.