Research On Li Wentian’s Calligraphy

Qing Dynasty was the thriving era of tablet calligraphy. Li Wentian, living in this time, wasalso influenced by this trend when he studied calligraphy. Throughout the country, the south ofthe Five Ridges was not an important calligraphy city in the history. Li Wentian had studiedtablet calligraphy all his life long, which had a significant impact on the calligraphy of the southof the Five Ridges as well as the whole country. This article, basing on the historical documents,researched the life of Li Wentian and his family, and corrected some errors and combined withthe background of Qing Dynasty to make an in-depth study on Li Wentian from the political,academic, artistic aspects, etc.. His calligraphy was discussed mainly from three aspects. First,the version problem of Huashan Stele and the spread of its four best versions were studied in thispart, and the important discussion was concentrated on the version collected by Li Wentian.When Li Wentian researched the Huashan Stele, he visited many celebrities, some of whom werehis friends, so his intercourse was discussed in this section. Second, the origin and basis of LiWentian’s disavowal of the Preface of the Orchid Pavilion, combined with the academicenvironment of the Qing Dynasty and based on the “Dingwu Version”, were explored in this part.Third, the calligraphy works of Li Wentian such as seal script, official scrip, regular script,running script and cursive script were classified and appreciated in this section, and the artisticachievement of calligraphy was researched, too. The last part of the paper was the epilogue,which included the unsolved problems.