Excerpt from the Third Stone Drum Poem in seal script

The hunting chariot is ever so steady;
The metal-ornamented reins are …
The mailed four-horse teams are completely select.
The left outer-steed is spirited;
The right outer-steed is robust.
We thereby ascend the plain.
Our war chariots come to a halt on a knoll;
The palace chariot is unhitched.
We draw our bows and wait to shoot.*

One of the most influential painters, calligraphers, and seal carvers of the modern era, Wu Changshuo was born in Zhangwu village in northwestern Zhejiang Province. When Taiping rebels swept into the province in 1860, the seventeen year old fled with his father into the mountains, where they lived off nature for some four years and were the only survivors of their nine-member family. After 1872 Wu traveled extensively in the Yangtze delta, cultivating relations with a wide circle of scholars, artists, and collectors, and resided alternately in Suzhou and Shanghai for the rest of his life. Wu's national fame began to soar after the founding of the Republic of China in early 1912, and he attracted many young aspiring artists as his students and followers.

As a calligrapher, Wu Changshuo is especially admired for his running script and seal script, both of which can be seen on this scroll. His seal script is based on a famous group of ancient stone inscriptions from around the fifth century B.C.E. The Stone Drums, also known as the Hunting Stone Inscriptions, are a set of ten carved granite boulders inscribed with a unique form of early seal script. Although there is considerable debate as to their age and purpose, the drums are the earliest stone inscriptions unearthed in China to date. Rediscovered around the seventh century C.E., these highly eroded inscriptions were best known to later scholars and epigraphers through old rubbings. Wu Changshuo became fascinated with this unique ancient script and set about reinterpeting it with brush and ink. The current scroll falls within Wu Changshuo's most intense period of experimentation with stone drum calligraphy. Wu also added a comment, which shows the distinct leftward slant that is a hallmark of his personal approach to running script.

* From translation by Gilbert L. Mattos, The Stone Drums of Ch'in, Monumenta Serica Monograph Series XIX (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1988), 220.