The Return of the Absent Servants: Chou Fang's Double Sixes RestoredAuthor(s): James CahillSource: Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America, Vol. 15 (1961), pp. 26-28Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20067030 .

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Brief Notices In this section are brief communications and shorter articles which

present single objects or specific aspects of oriental art. Curators,

collectors and scholars are invited to contribute. ?

Ed.

The Return of the Absent Servants:

Chou Fang's Double Sixes Restored

Although Chou Fang, the late eighth century portrayer of Palace Ladies, is no

more likely than any other major T'ang dynasty master to be represented today ^

by genuine works, we are unusually fortunate in having a number of early and

excellent copies of works by him or by close followers. There is enough stylistic con

sistency among these to give us a fairly clear idea of his individual contribution to

Chinese figure painting, and enough significant variance to allow the fascinating sport of arranging them in sequences and trying to determine their relative distance from the source. Perhaps the most often reproduced of all these paintings, and one of the earliest

and finest, is the short hand-scroll in the Freer Gallery of Art representing Ladies

Playing Double Sixes (a game similar to backgammon).1 It has been variously dated, from the time of Chou Fang to the eleventh century. The purpose of this note is not

to offer any new opinion about the date, or analysis or evaluation of the picture, but to report the restoration to the scroll of a portion with two additional figures, a long

missing fragment that completes the composition.

It was known from the time the Freer Gallery

purchased this painting that it was not com

plete; a colophon written in 1937 by a Shanghai scholar named Ch'u Te-i mentions a description of another version, recorded in Juan Yiian's

Sbih-ch'ii sui-pi (ch. 8, p. 2), in which there were eight figures, instead of only six as in the

Freer scroll. This longer version is now in the

Palace Museum, Taichung and is unpublished.2 The writer saw it there in 1959 and found it to

be a much later and inferior copy of interest only because it presented the complete composition

with two additional standing figures at the be

ginning and so excited speculation about what

might have become of the corresponding portion of the Freer scroll.

Chinese essays on the collecting of art speak of

a mysterious affinity between paintings and peo

ple which sees to it that particular works fall into

the hands of men who will best appreciate them

?or presumably in our institutionalized age, of

museums where they are most needed. Whether

or not drawn (as a representative of the Freer

Gallery) by some such occult force, the writer

found himself several months later in a small

restaurant in Geneva, lunching with M. Jean Pierre Dubosc, who mentioned having recently

acquired a small early painting of two standing

figures. M. Dubosc, with his customary sharp ness of eye, had recognized its stylistic connec

tion with the Freer scroll, and the writer, with a

wild surmise, asked for a photo to compare with

the two figures in the Palace Museum version.

A photo of the latter was kindly supplied by Messrs. Chuang Yen and Li Lin-ts'an of the Na

tional Palace and Central Museums. The two

pairs of figures corresponded, as we had hoped

(PI. 2,3).

M. Dubosc then sent his fragment to the Freer

Gallery, where it was compared in detail with

the larger portion already there. The most strik

ing difference between them is that the areas of

white pigment and some of the linear drawing in

the main part are much heavier than in the frag ment; this accounts for the pale, "ghostly" ap

pearance of the two new figures in the reunited

scroll (Pi. 1). It was thought at first that the small piece had been more heavily washed, but a

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Sap*"*??:'

M: "M mg

Wm

0:"

W ' ?

wiW i;^?*.r

r" ai..;

F/g. ?. "Ladies Playing Double Sixes," by Chou Fang. Colors on silk. 12 1/16 inches by 27 5/16 inches. Freer Gallery of Art, no. 39.37.

Fig. 2. Detail, two figures at right (new fragment).

Fig. 3. Detail, two figures at right of version of "Ladies Playing Double Sixes" in the Palace

Museum, Taichung.

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more convincing explanation was offered by Mr. Takashi Sugiura, mounter for the Freer

Gallery: that the main section had been re

touched at some points, and white pigment soaked through the silk from the back, to make the figures stand out more clearly. As he pointed out, the lighter silk tone in the larger piece indi

cates rather that it, and not the fragment, has

been strongly washed, and perhaps chemically bleached. The newlv discovered fragment, Mr.

Sugiura maintained, represents the original state

of the painting, altered only by the passage of

centuries and the inevitable abrasion, with vir

tually no retouching.

The difference in appearance between the two

pieces is, then, due to later treatment. Just when

the scroll was divided is impossible to determine, but the existence of an old-looking copy of the

incomplete composition, without the two fig ures, formerly in the Mut? Collection,3 suggests that it was some centuries ago. It might seem

logical to suppose, in fact, that the cutting oc

curred after the complete Palace Museum copy was made, and before the incomplete Mut? one.

Neither is precisely datable, but a guess would

put the first in the early part of the Ming period, the second in the later, and suppose the division to have happened in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The possibility of other early versions

that could have served as models for the copyist, however, makes such conjecture very risky.

Aside from these differences in appearance, the two portions agreed perfectly. The drawing of faces, hair, and clothing seemed the work of a

single hand; the pigments appeared to match.

Technical examination by Mr. Rutherford J. Gettens of the Freer Gallery Laboratory sub

stantiated the conclusion already reached on the

basis of style; there was no discrepancy. A line

running across both portions about one and five

eighths inches from the bottom, representing an

abrupt change in the spacing of threads in the

silk weave, removed any doubt that they were

parts of a single piece of silk.

Our conclusion was communicated to M. Du

bosc, who, in a generous gesture of friendship to the Freer Gallery and to its Director, Mr. A.

G. Wenley, presented the painting as a gift.4 The next step was the reconstitution of the scroll

in something like its original form. The groups of figures in the Palace Museum copy are much

more widely spaced, so that composition could

serve as a guide only in the most general way. It

indicated, however, that the standing figures at

right were separated from the central group by somewhat more space than were the two girls

carrying a jar of water at left. Some blank silk

had obviously been removed when the scroll was

cut. The right edge of the stool that holds the

lady with upraised arm had been trimmed, but no attempt was made to restore this, as it would

have involved new drawing. A piece of old silk was selected to match the tone of the painting, and inserted between the two portions to give

what was felt to be the proper spacing. In addi

tion, a strip of silk was inserted below the new

fragment, which had evidently been trimmed at

top and bottom as well as the sides, and was about a half-inch shorter than the rest. This work was

accomplished with great skill by Mr. Sugiura; the result is seen in Fig. 1. The added figures, turned inward, close that end of the composition in good Tang style, and the whole has regained its original symmetry. Moreover, the jar of water

carried by the two girls at the left now makes

sense: the eunuch at the right holds a flat dish, to be filled with water for the players of Double Sixes to wash their hands in when the game is

over.

James Cahill

Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

NOTES

1. Reg. no. 3937. Colors on silk. Former dimensions: 12ife"x

18%". New fragment: reg. no. 60.1, HYs" x6V?". Overall

dimensions, as now mounted: 12-&" x 27tV.

2. Recorded also in the Ning-shou Kung section of Shih-ch'u

pao-chi Part II; and in Ku-kung shu-hua lu, ch. IV, p. 13 Photo of the opening section courtesy of the National Palace

Museum.

3. Reproduced in the Mut? catalog, Ch?s? Seikan, vol. II, pi. 24.

It is attributed to Ch'ien Hsiian^ and bears a poem and signa ture purportedly written by that artist. The same poem and

signature appear at the end of the Palace Museum version, indi

cating that it originally was intended not as a forged Chqu

Fang, but as a forged Ch'ien Hs?an copy after Chou Fang.

Perhaps a genuine Ch'ien Hsiian copy existed at one time,

although the doggerel character of the poem argues rather for a case of complete fabrication.

4. Because the Freer Gallery of Art is technically prevented from

accepting gifts, a token payment was made.

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