Wú Chāngshuò 吴昌硕 / 吳昌碩
Name: Wú Jùn 吳俊，Wú Jùnqīng吳俊卿
Courtesy Name: Chāngshuò 昌碩，Cāngshuò倉碩，Cāngshí倉石
Art Name: Fǒudàorén 缶道人，Lǎofǒu 老缶，Kǔtiě 苦铁，Dàlóng大聋
Wú Chāngshuò 吴昌硕 / 吳昌碩 (1844—1927) was born in Xiàofēng County (now Ānjí County) in Húzhōu, Zhejiang Province, to a well-educated family. At about the age of six, Wu began to learn letters and later went to a county school. In 1857, under the guidance of his father, he started to practice seal carving which he grew interested in at the same time when he went deeper into his literary study. In the spring of 1860, Wu, together with his father, fled from their hometown due to the warfare between Taiping Army and the Qing Dynasty. He then wandered in Anhui and Hubei as a refugee for five years after he was separated from his father. After the Taiping Rebellion ended in 1864, he returned to his hometown and reunited with his father while all their other family members, including Wu’s fiancée, had died during the war. Having passed the first-level civil service examination in 1865, Wu went to Hangzhou in 1869 to study at Gǔjīng Jīngshè 詁經精舍, a renowned college founded by one of the most distinguished scholar-officials of the Qing Dynasty, Ruǎn Yuán 阮元 (1764—1849), and he continued his study of ancient script as well as classical literature under Yú Yuè 俞樾 (1821—1906), a prominent philologist. In the same year, Wu compiled Pǔ cháo yìn cún 朴巢印存, a collection of his own seal carving works. Returning to his home in the winter of 1870, he kept on practicing seal carving and calligraphy, and at the same time earned his living through teaching. In 1872, Wu moved to Shanghai where he met the painter Gāo Yōngzhī 高邕之, the co-founder of Yuyuan Shuhua Shanhui (Yuyuan Calligraphy and Painting Charitable Association) 豫園書畫善會, an art-charity group in Shanghai which Wu also joined in 1909. He returned home and became a professional seal carver in 1873. In the following years, Wu moved to Jiaxing where he studied antiquities and subsequently to Huzhou where he stayed as a protégé at the book collector Lù Xīnyuán’s 陸心源 (1838—1894) house and helped in cataloging antiquities as well as the accounting work.
After settling down in Suzhou with his family in 1882, Wu took a trip to Tianjin in 1883 via Shanghai where he made friends with Rèn Bónián 任伯年 (1840—1896) who was a renowned painter of Shanghai School at the time and later played the role of Wu’s advisor when Wu started to paint. Fascinated by the rubbings of Qin stone-drum inscriptions that he received from Pān Zhōngruì潘鐘瑞 in 1886, Wu began to practice the stone-drum script since then and made a lifelong devotion to the study of the stone-drum script. In 1900, 河井荃廬 (1871—1945) became a student of him. Wu was recommended to be the first president of Xiling Yinshe (Xiling Seal Art Society) 西泠印社 in 1913 and in the same year, established an intimate friendship with Wáng Zhèn 王震 (1867—1938) who helped spread Wu’s painting, calligraphy and seal art works among the business circle of Shanghai. At the age of 71, Wu held his first one-person exhibition at a Japanese garden in Shanghai, after which his works became popular among Japanese art circle. Known for his distinctive brushstrokes that imitate the seal scripts, Wu’s paintings, just like his calligraphy and seal works, contain the vigor and strength that distinguish themselves from paintings by other masters of Shanghai School. In addition to his highly individualized brushstroke techniques, the compositions of his flower paintings as well as his uses of bold colors were also breakthroughs from the conventions of traditional Chinese paintings.
Zimeng Xiang
Sources:
Pan, Tianshou. “Huiyi Wu Changshuo Xiansheng 回忆吴昌硕先生.” Art 美术, no.6 (1995): 4-9. Accessed 2016. doi: 10.13864/j.cnki.cn11-1311/j.1995.06.001.
Zhang, Mianxi, eds. “Wu Changshuo Nianbian 吴昌硕年表.” Chinese Painting & Calligraphy 中国书画, no. 3 (2014): 45-47. Accessed 2016.
