? First, the official porcelain capital is fascinated by painting porcelain.
In the first year of Guangxu (1875), Wang Fengchi, who was 5 1 year old, bid farewell to the Imperial Academy where he had worked for ten years, and went to Raozhou, Jiangxi Province, not far from his hometown in Hubei Province, as an alternate magistrate, and was "empowered" the following year. During Xianfeng period, Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Factory was destroyed by Taiping Army. In the fifth year of Tongzhi (1866), Li Hongzhang raised132,000 yuan and sent Jiujiang Customs Department to supervise Cai Jinqing to rebuild the Imperial Kiln Factory. After firing porcelain for the wedding of Emperor Tongzhi and porcelain for Cixi Palace of Gathered Elegance, it recovered to a considerable level in the first year of Guangxu. With a stable social environment, harmonious political ecology, excellent imperial kiln factory and superb talent team, Wang Fengchi came to Jingdezhen to take charge of taxation. Porcelain industry has always been the most important financial source and the most famous cultural industry in Jingdezhen, and it is natural for Wang Fengchi to participate in it. ①②
Judging from the porcelain preserved today, from the first year of Guangxu to the third year, Wang Fengchi participated in the creation of a considerable number of pale crimson porcelain, which shows his enthusiasm for making porcelain. These porcelains include inscriptions drawn by others for Wang Fengchi, customized gifts from Wang Fengchi and his homemade porcelains. As you can imagine, Wang Fengchi has just arrived in Jingdezhen, and his interpersonal circle has not been fully established, and he still doesn't know much about porcelain painting. Colleagues and friends customized porcelain. Because of his position and calligraphy, he was asked to write an inscription. He just attached an inscription. For example, in September of the first year of Guangxu, Huang Dingzhan customized Wang Shaowei's paintings and presented Fan Hai's Sima Tu porcelain plate, which was the earliest light crimson work that Wang Fengchi participated in. (3) (See Xu He's China's Light Crimson Porcelain in the Late Qing Dynasty) There is a noble scholar in the painting, overlooking a crane, and a teenager standing beside him, holding a piano, which is quite an artistic conception of an ancient hermit. This porcelain dish also witnessed Wang Fengchi's contacts with local officials in Jingdezhen. In the first paragraph, the author "Ding Zhan" is Huang Dingzhan, who is in charge of pottery affairs in Jingdezhen. According to the allusions in Historical Records in Huang Ding-zhan's poems, "Fan Hai" is a dragon. After investigation, the Continued Record of Hunan Guild Hall contains the Income and Expenditure Statement of the First Year of Guangxu in Jiangxi Hunan Guild Hall, which contains "Long () lived for thirteen years and donated six taels of silver". So, the name of the dragon was determined, and the name was called, Hunan people. He was an official in Ji 'an, Jiangxi, and lived in Chica for thirteen years. (Figure 3)
? The historic cooperation between Wang Fengchi and Chengmen took place in the autumn of Guangxu. Although Cheng Men began painting porcelain as early as four years in Tongzhi, he obviously didn't want to make a living by painting porcelain. In the summer of Guangxu's second year, he was invited to visit Jingdezhen again. In the autumn, he created landscape porcelain plates for Xue, then the magistrate of Raozhou (Mr. Ma's collection). This porcelain painting shows a scholar sitting in a thatched cottage between mountains and rivers, with beautiful weather. Cheng Men's summary of the previous paragraph is quite remarkable, and I think it should be written by Wang Fengchi. We compare the inscription "Prosperity, Longevity and Auspiciousness" of this porcelain plate with that of Jin Wang cooperation porcelain plate in Wang Fengchi, and find that official script is highly consistent with regular script. In addition, combined with Wang Fengchi's status as an academician and proficient in calligraphy, he is now the right official of Jingdezhen, so this porcelain representing Jingdezhen and praising the magistrate of Yun Jie is the best candidate. (Figure 4- 1, Figure 4-2)
Wang Fengchi has a good taste in porcelain painting, and only cooperates with Wang Shaowei, Jin Pinqing and Cheng Men. Through observation day and night, Jin Pinqing's official kiln paintings became more and more familiar with porcelain painting, and Jin and Wang admired his knowledge and literary talent more and more. Today, a square hat tube painted by Wang Fengchi calligrapher Jin Pinqing and Wang Shaowei witnessed the relationship between the three men's porcelain paintings. On the one hand, Jin Pinqing painted a phoenix bird perched on the road, and on the other hand, Wang Shaowei painted a cold monkey shaking vines. On the other hand, Wang Fengchi wrote: "The product is as clean as jade, sometimes it is a hat rack, sometimes it is a flower arrangement, and sometimes it is a poem tube. Wang Shaowei in Wu Shan and Jin Pinqing in Shan Zhi took half a day off to paint what they are good at, which is also very elegant. Chen Dan Fengchi was selected. " (Figure 5) Thus, Wang Fengchi conceived the proposition, Wang Jin painted it, and then Wang Fengchi commented on it, thus forming the strongest trio in the history of pale crimson colored porcelain.
? Most related porcelains in Wang Fengchi are painted in gold. According to common sense, proficient in calligraphy, it should not be difficult to draw porcelain in daily communication with artists such as Cheng. Judging from the related brush strokes of porcelain, we think that the brush strokes of "making", "giving gifts", "giving things", "learning painting" and "coming back" may be self-painted.
In 2020 1 month, Bengbu Museum exhibited a pair of inscribed landscape pen caps collected by Mr. Wang Kejian of yi county. (Figure 6- 1) The painting style of this hat is different from that of Jin and Wang, and it is very close to the porcelain plate of "One of the Eight Scenes of Fuchuan in Poqiao, jathyapple". (Figure 6-2) These two works may have been painted by themselves. In addition, we also saw three bottles named "Han Chun", one of which was seen online some years ago (Figure 7), one was collected by a Tibetan friend in Songlinge, Hebei Province (Figure 8), and the other was auctioned by China Trade Shengjia this time. These bottles are simple and elegant, with only a few strokes and extraordinary artistic conception. (Figure 9) There is also a plum blossom bottle of magpie named "Hunchun", which is unified with the above plum blossom bottle, obviously different from Wang Jin's style, and should also be attributed to Feng Chi's self-painting. (Photo 10) In the fourth year of Guangxu, Wang Fengchi left Jingdezhen to become the magistrate in Nankang. However, the legend of his porcelain making is still circulating among the people, and some people use his name for profit. As for the occasional "Chen Dan" passages, most of them are written by Min.
(To be continued)