Bulletin Number One 1985

with contemporary artists and scholars and is a valuable historical document. Moreover, it goes to show that the traditional communion of scholars through art and literature was still thriving in spite of the commercialization of art at that time. The painting was not dated by Luo Pin. Yet the colophons written by Wu Xiqi, Zhao Huaiyu and Jiang Jian all carried a date corresponding to the year 1794 ， whil e Weng Fanggang added two poems t o the painting in 1806, saying that it was already 'thirteen years after the poetry and painting by the various gentlemen were done.' Therefore, it is highly possible that this painting was painted in 1794 when Luo Pin was sixty-two years old. Even though Luo Pin had travelled extensively over China, he confessed in his inscription to this painting that he had never been to Sichuan. Therefore, in trying to portray the most inaccessible natural barrier in Sichuan, Luo turned to Li Po's Hard Road to (李白〈蜀道難〉 ) tospark off his imagination. Indeed, what Luo Pin rendered in the painting i s like the pictorial counterpart of Li Po's poetic expression. With dense and solid brushstrokes and subtle combination of washes, the artist has succeeded in realizing before our eyes Li Po's words: 'Theinterlocked peaks are barely a foot below heaven While withered pines hang, top down, from the hedges precipitous. Foaming torrents and plunging cataracts outroar one another; Thundering down myriad ravines, they lash the cliffs and roll the rock.' (translation by Liu Wu-chi) However perilous and mighty the Jianmen mountain pass from the hands of Luo Pin appears to be, it does not aim to capture the Plate 4 Luo Pin; Mountain Pass in Sichuan, (undated); Hanging scroll, ink and colour on paper, 100.3 x 27.4 cm 16 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS