Thousand Character Classic

This Thousand Character Classic is a handscroll in semi-cursive script by the Ming-dynasty painter and calligrapher Wen Zhengming, written on the fourth day of the eighth month of 1558, when he was 89 by Chinese reckoning; reproductions describe it as ink on silk, 31 × 284 cm.

The Thousand Character Classic (Qianziwen) is a sixth-century poem of exactly one thousand characters, none repeated, set out in 250 lines of four characters. Traditionally said to have been composed by Zhou Xingsi for Emperor Wu of Liang, it became one of the standard primers for learning characters, and because every character is different it was also a favourite exercise for calligraphers, from the Sui monk Zhiyong to Zhao Mengfu. The scroll runs from the title and the opening line, 天地玄黃 (heaven and earth, dark and yellow), to the closing line about grammatical particles, and ends with Wen's dated signature.

Wen Zhengming (1470–1559), from Suzhou, was one of the Four Masters of Ming painting and a leading figure of the Wu school, and by 1541 he was regarded as the greatest calligrapher in China, especially in regular and semi-cursive script. Chinese accounts say that he trained by copying the Thousand Character Classic ten times a day, and he wrote out the text many times throughout his life: dated versions include a cursive album of 1529 in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, a regular-script scroll of 1537 in the Palace Museum, Beijing, and a handscroll of 1533 sold at Christie's.

This copy belongs to the last months of his long career. The characters are written column by column within a faintly ruled grid, in a fluent running hand that keeps each character distinct. A modern Chinese facsimile pairs it with Wen's Biography of Zhang Yichuan, dated to the second month of the following year, 1559, the year of his death.