Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Liu Gongquan
Tang calligrapher and court scholar whose bony, upright regular script survives in the Xuanmi Pagoda and Shence Army steles
A desk holds an unrolled sheet bearing three bold black ink strokes, with a rack of many brushes above it, a stone ink slab and ink stick, a porcelain bowl, a red lacquer box, a dish of red seal paste and a paperweight; a small seated figure shows through a round window onto bamboo.
Also known as Zi Chengxuan · Liu Shaoshi
Liu Gongquan, courtesy name Chengxuan, came from Huayuan in the capital district; his elder brother Liu Gongchuo rose to minister of war. He passed the jinshi examination early in the Yuanhe era, and Emperor Muzong, having seen his writing in a Buddhist temple, called him to court as a remonstrance official and calligrapher-in-attendance at the Hanlin Academy. When Muzong asked him how to use the brush, he answered that when the heart is upright the brush is upright, a reply contemporaries took as advice on government. He served as court calligrapher for decades and reached the post of junior tutor to the heir apparent, with the title Duke of Hedong; families of high officials who failed to get his hand for an ancestor's stele were thought to have failed in filial duty. His regular-script Xuanmi Pagoda stele dates from 841 and the Shence Army stele from 843. He died in 865 at eighty-eight by Chinese count and was posthumously made grand tutor to the heir apparent.
Life and times
Dates 778 CE–865 CE