Deng Shi Ru (1743-1805) - aka Teng Shih-ju Deng Shi Ru was a famous calligraphist and expert seal cutter. He was the great master of the chih-shih-hsueh movement. Like his work in seal script, his study of authentic Han models for inspiration marked a major change, after Cheng Fu, in the practice of clerical script. After Wang Shu's death, there were two basic approaches to seal script calligraphy: Ch'ien Tien (1741-1806), Hung Liang-chi (1746-1809), Sun Hsing-yen (1753-1818), and others maintained the conservative, conventional style, in contrast to a second group led by Deng Shi Ru. Deng grew up at a time when the seal script tradition was still dominated bby Wang shu's transitional style. like the writings of his conservative contemporary Ch'ien Tien, Deng's early works related to the wiry elegance of Li Yang-ping. However, Deng later abandoned Li as his model and turned to even earlier works of the Chin, Han and the Three Kingdoms periods; and by seeking out the authentic sources of seal script, he literally made the older conventional style obsolete. Stylistically, Deng broke through the mechanical precision of Li Yanksping's style by structurally introducing a degree of irregularity into his geometric symmetry. Deng's study of other scripts, especially clerical, enalbled him to draw upon a wider range of stroke movements in his seal writing. This his characters have a dignified swaying movement and a moist inflexion. Deng was not interested in dtreaked dry-ink effects, nor in exhibiting overt energy. Rather, Deng wrote at a leisurely pace and sought a rythmic tension in which is energy was contained and directed. Deng's calligraphy is one of the major products of the chin-shih-hsueh movement. He had the courage and scope to seek out new sources of inspiration in the old, and by his example. his followers each developed distinctive styles which gave to the ensuing period an inprecedented richness and variety. The Accomplishments of the Chin-shih-hsueh calligraphers The accomplishments of the Chin-shih-hsueh calligraphers involved prerequisites of a technical, artistic, and scholarly nature. Seal script writing presumes the master's ability to handle the brush in the manner required for form strokes of controlled thickness, as well as a highly developed sense of balance and design, a precise feeling for line and spaces. Technical mastery and artistic sense are closely linked, for it is the strnght of the brushstrokes that animates the surrounding spaces. Without this sense of life in the strokes, the structure, no matter how spatially pleasing, remains static and lifeless. Beyond the technical ans artistic requirements, however, the chin-shih-hsueh calligraphers possessed a third essental, a thourough knowledge of the archaic conventions and possible configurations of their models, based primarily on a study of etymology and of philosophy in its board sense. In this respect, the calligraphers of the mid-Ching andafter differed from their predecessors in the specificity and the degree of those pursuits. The variety of models available to them from the Chin, Han and Six Dynasties periods was large, due to the independence, both regional and individual, which characterized the evolution of the scripts before reaching a stable "norm," or plateau, of development. In that initial phase, because seal script was the prevailing type, was being actively practices, and in the process of gorwth and stabilization, the early types embody a natural truth, an honesty of expression which could not be matched by the later re-interpretations or re-carvings. The Ching calligraphers were very much aware of this. And while they worked primarily from rubbings of inscriptions, they sought to recapture this honesty in brush-written forms, not merely by imitation, visual allusion, or personal embellishments, but by and absorption so complete that their subsequent interpretations were valid transformations of the original. The composition, the spacing, the mode and energy of the brushwork became interpretations in the mind of the calligrapher in seach of the ideal balance and proportion within the limitations of the chosen script and model. Each character therefore represented a defined range of aesthetic choices; yet the calligrapher was composing a fresh work, using the harmonies, rythms and cadences of the earlier mode. This was essentially the method and approach which emerged as the matrix of later Chinese calligraphy and painting.

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