Scroll from a set, painted with a floral design in black and white, with an inscription near the bottom. The scroll has a patterned brown border. A string is attached at the top, and at the bottom the scroll terminates in a wooden baton. The right column of the inscription reads東坡論書法，剛健含婀娜，用之以寫氣，可乎抑不可, which roughly means ‘when it comes to calligraphy, Don Po thinks that the brushwork of the best work should be both robust and gentle at the same time; but when it refers to presenting the energy flow (the Chinese ‘Qi’) of a work, I doubt whether this concept is appropriate.’ 東坡 ‘Don Po’ is the pseudonym of 蘇軾 ‘Su Shi’ (his real name, January 8, 1037 – August 24, 1101), a famous Chinese writer, poet, painter, calligrapher, pharmacologist, gastronome, and a statesman of the Song dynasty. This painting was made by 白雲鄉人‘bai yun xiang ren’, which means ‘the man from the village of clouds’. This is probably another pseudonym of 賀祝堯 ‘He Zhu-Yao’ , the artist who painted some of the others in this set, because the drawing and writing styles are both almost the same as 4667i &4667ii.
