Rubbing and Painting of Zhou Bronze Vessel

The collapse of the Chinese Ming dynasty and establishment of the Manchu Qing dynasty in 1644 provided a serious shock to the Chinese scholar-official class. Profoundly disillusioned with politics, many of these literati sought to reaffirm their cultural identity through the study of China’s past. Over the course of the Qing era and into the 20th century, a broad antiquarian movement emerged, analyzing ancient texts in an effort to rediscover and strengthen the fundamental essence of Chinese civilization. Although occasionally bordering on escapist intellectualism, this movement produced strong scholarship and the foundations of modern Chinese historiography.

This scroll, a rare visual record of Chinese antiquarian scholarship, depicts an ancient bronze vessel from the Western Zhou dynasty (ca. 1100–776 BC) and includes a rubbing of the vessel’s interior inscription. Dù Cén also has transcribed the interior inscription into more readable standard script, to the right of the rubbing, and to the left he notes that the vessel was once in the collection of Fèi Xū 費戌from Wǔjìn in Jiangsu province. He adds that he has seen two similar vessels in Beijing, one in the imperial palace.