Calligraphy's authenticity assailed

Sotheby's defended the authenticity of a famous piece of Chinese calligraphy that it auctioned in September for $8.22 million after three scholars from the Shanghai Museum asserted it was a forgery, the auction house said Sunday.

Sotheby's in Hong Kong stood by its attribution of the Gong Fu Tie calligraphy, though it also said it would investigate the scholars' findings, according to a post on Sotheby's official microblog.

The Gong Fu Tie was sold in New York on September 19 at the Sotheby's Fine Classical Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy auction.

The three scholars from the Shanghai Museum, Zhong Yinlan, Shan Guolin and Ling Lizhong, posited that the roughly 1,000-year-old piece of calligraphy was actually a copy created between 1820 and 1871, according to a report in the Xinmin Evening News.

However, Liu Yiqian, the private curator who bought the Gong Fu Tie at the Sotheby's auction, challenged the challengers Sunday when he told Shanghai Television Station (STV) that the scholars made their assertions based on photograph evidence of the piece.

The Gong Fu Tie was created by the famous poet and politician Su Shi (1037-1101). It is considered a masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy.

The piece, which is nine characters long, is a farewell letter to Su's friend and fellow artist Guo Gongfu (1035-1113).

Liu had planned to exhibit the piece on March 28 at his private museum, the Long Museum, said Bao Jing, a museum press officer.

The three scholars said that the forger created Liu's piece by tracing another copy of the Gong Fu Tie, a stone carving that was etched by a Huizhou merchant named Bao Shufang (about 1763-1807), the report said. The technique originated in the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties to protect original works of art. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), forgers took up the technique.

The three scholars said the coarse forgery did not even match the stone carving.

The Shanghai Museum plans to issue a report on the authenticity of the auctioned piece of calligraphy.

Liu told sina.com Saturday that he had consulted with calligraphy experts before the auction, and the experts had determined that the piece was genuine.