"Xiaoxiang Bamboo Stone Map" adopts a long scroll composition, showing the vast scenery of the confluence of Xixiao and Xiang in Lingling County, Hunan Province, which is remote from Dongting. The whole painting is centered on the intersection of Xiaoxiang and Ershui, with distant mountains and misty water, wind and rain thin bamboo, near water and cloud water, squatting stones and distant mountains, and bamboo and smoky trees in sharp contrast, which makes people read thousands of miles in a narrow frame.
"Xiaoxiang Bamboo Stone Map" is a silk ink painting created by Su Shi in the Northern Song Dynasty, which is now in China Art Museum. Xiaoxiang Bamboo Stone Map is one of the two masterpieces handed down by Su Shi, and the other one, Dead Wood and Strange Stone Map, has flowed into Japan during the Anti-Japanese War and unexpectedly appeared at Christie's auction house in early June 218.
creative background
Su Shi's paintings are fond of dead wood and bamboo stones, and his images are concise but rich in meaning. Su Shi's pen for painting is quite calligraphic, which provides valuable experience for the later literati to "write" the pen. Apart from dead wood, Su Shi loves bamboo very much, and once said, "It is better to eat without meat than to live without bamboo". Su Shi's painting of bamboo is a typical style of literati painting, but the bamboo made by Su Shi is "mostly freehand, not seeking the shape".
At the end of the volume of Xiaoxiang Bamboo Stone Map, there is a summary of the words "Shi is an old work". Wu Qin, a native of Luling in Ming Dynasty, made a textual research. As Mo Bao, who was given by Su Shi in Huangzhou (A.D. 18-185), the painting was the "Xin Lao" in the autograph, that is, Sun Jue and Dongpo were scholars in the same year. Sun Jue and Su Dongpo shared the same political views and their thoughts were very close. Later, they were subjected to political persecution together with Dongpo.