Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/186

 compilation to the throne and was commended for it. At the same time he presented another work, entitled 神廟留中奏疏彙要 Shên-miao liu-chung tsou-shu hui-yao, 40 chüan, comprising memorials which Emperor Shên-tsung had neglected to read or had purposely excluded from publication. This latter work was printed in 1937, from a manuscript copy, by the Yenching University Library.

Upon his return to Peking, in 1624, Tung found officialdom torn by a political strife in which he wished to have no part. On the one side, were the followers of the unscrupulous eunuch, ; and on the other, the officials who had joined the Tung-lin party (see under and ). He therefore gladly accepted, in 1625, the presidency of the Board of Ceremonies in Nanking—a post of high prestige, but with no power. A year later he quietly resigned from this post and retired. In 1627 the last Ming Emperor,, brought the eunuch party to justice and the offenders were punished. Tung's name escaped untarnished and he was congratulated for his foresight. Late in 1631 he was ordered to go to Peking where he was named head of the Supervisorate of Instruction of the Heir Apparent. He arrived the following spring and served in that capacity for two years. After repeated requests to be retired on the ground of old age, he was finally granted the privilege in 1634. He died two years later and was buried southwest of Soochow near Lake T'ai, on a hill named Yü-yang shan 漁洋山. A year after his death he was given the posthumous title of Grand Tutor of the Heir Apparent, and a temple was erected to his memory in Sungkiang. In 1644 he was given the posthumous name, Wên-min 文敏, by the Prince of Fu (see under ).

During his lifetime Tung Ch'i-ch'ang enjoyed great fame as a calligrapher and painter, and after his death his fame increased, not only because of the excellence of his work, but because Emperors Shêng-tsu and Kao-tsung were enthusiastic imitators of his calligraphy. In 1705 when Emperor Shêng-tsu, in the course of his fifth tour of South China, stayed in the compound of the provincial commander-in-chief, Chang Yün-i 張雲翼, he wrote an essay commenting on Tung's art. He also caused a tablet (pien 扁) to be made for the temple dedicated to him, and conferred a minor official title on one of his descendants. Two generations later Emperor Kao-tsung became an accomplished calligrapher, in Tung's recognized style, as did also many of his courtiers. This Emperor also collected a large number of Tung's paintings.

If we are to accept at face value Tung's account, he developed his calligraphic and artistic skill in the following manner. When he was seventeen (sui), he and a cousin together took the annual examination at the prefectural school in Sungkiang. Confident that his papers would win him first honors, he was amazed, on the contrary, to find that his cousin, whom he had considered his inferior, was first on the list, and that he himself was second. The examiner explained that his papers were excellent, but that his handwriting was poor. Taking this rebuff to heart, Tung made up his mind to excel in calligraphy. He began by imitating facsimiles of the great masters, such as Yen Chên-ch'ing (see under ) and Yü Shih-nan 虞世南, and later by practicing in the styles of Chung Yu (see under ) and Wang Hsi-chih (see under ). After three years of hard preparation he could begin to take pride in his writing, despite the fact that the facsimiles he was using were not the best. Fortunately he had an opportunity, in his early twenties, to be employed by the great collector, Hsiang Yüan-pien (see under ), in the latter's home in Kashing, Chekiang. After studying Hsiang's many specimens of original calligraphy and painting, and his rubbings of ancient calligraphy taken from stone, he improved his technique, with the result that in the cursive (行書) and draft (草書) forms in particular, he evolved a style of his own. By the time he became a chin-shih, at the age of thirty-five (sui), he was a recognized master of calligraphy.

In the field of painting Tung Ch'i-ch'ang did not achieve quite the originality that he did in calligraphy. He often imitated the works of Tung Yüan (see under ), Chü-jan 巨然 (10th century), Mi Fei (see under ), and Huang Kung-wang 黃公望 —all representative of the free and easy styles of the literary artists. In such modes he could, with a few well-chosen strokes of his brush, satisfy the requests of his friends or the demands of his creditors. This perhaps explains why he frequently expressed dislike of the meticulous care used by such artists as Li Ssŭ-hsün (see under ) and Chao Mêng-fu 趙孟頫. To complete a painting in 788