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Chinese Painters
Selected Artists of Ancient and Modern Mainland china: 220 CE -Nowadays.
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Human being Herding Horses, by Han Gan.
From the Tang Dynasty (c.740)
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BIOGRAPHIES OF CHINESE ARTISTS
For short profiles of selected major
painters from ancient China, too
every bit Hong Kong, Taiwan and the
mod and contemporary era of
the People'southward Republic of China,
involved in Buddhist and other
art forms, see the following:
Period of Disunity (221-589 CE)
Tang Dynasty (618-906)
5 Dynasties, 10 Kingdoms (907-60)
Vocal Dynasty (960-1270)
Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
20th Century Chinese Painters
Contemporary Chinese Painters
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Chinese Painters (c.220-nowadays)
Hither is a chronological list of selected Chinese artists, from the 4th century Period of Disunity to the 20th century Qing Dynasty and beyond. It features exponents of all the major genres of Chinese painting, such as landscape pictures, history painting, portraiture, and genre-paintings in nigh media including paper, silk, hemp cloth, hand-scrolls, fan paintings, and other forms. For ancient pottery painting, see: Neolithic Art in Red china (7500-2000 BCE), Shang Dynasty Art (c.1600-1000 BCE), Zhou Dynasty Art (1050-221 BCE) and Qin Dynasty Art (221-206 BCE). For Buddhist painting, come across: Arts of the Six Dynasties Period (220-589) and Sui Dynasty art (589-618). For other areas of specialist painting, see the famous Chinese Lacquerware (from c.4500 BCE) and Chinese Porcelain (c.100-200 CE).
Chinese Painters (220-2000) (Listed by Dynasty)
• Six Dynasties Menses (220-589)
Successor to the era of Han Dynasty Fine art (206 BCE - 220 CE)
- Gu Kaizhi (c.344-c.406)
- Lu Tanwei (flourished 465-72)
- Zhang Sengyou (flourished 500-50)
For curt biographies, encounter: Famous Chinese Painters: Menstruation of Disunity.
• Tang dynasty (618-906)
- Yan Liben (d.673)
- Li Sixun (651-716)
- Weichi Yiseng (flourished late 7th-early on 8th century)
- Wang Wei (699-759)
- Wu Daozi (flourished 710-760)
- Han Gan (c.715-781)
- Zhang Yanyuan (b.815)
- Guanxiu (832-912)
For short biographies, encounter: Famous Chinese Painters: Tang Dynasty.
• Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-60)
- Jing Hao (c.870-925)
- Guan Tong (flourished c.907-23)
- Li Cheng (919-67)
- Dong Yuan (d.962)
- Shi Ke (d.975)
- Juran (flourished 960-85)
- Works past Unknown Painters
For short bios, see: Famous Chinese Painters: 5 Dynasties/10 Kingdoms.
• Song Dynasty (960-1270)
- Fan Kuan (c.960-1030)
- Yan Wengui (967-1044)
- Xu Daoning (c.970-1051)
- Guo Eleven (c.1020-c.1090)
- Su Shi (1036-1101)
- Li Gonglin/ Li Longmian (c.1049-1106)
- Li Tang (c. 1050-1130)
- Mi Fu (1051-1107)
- Zhao Danian/ Zhao Lingrang (flourished c. 1080-1100)
- Huizong (1082-1135)
- Ma Hezhi (flourished c.1131-62)
- Zhang Zeduan (flourished early 12th century)
- Xia Gui (flourished 1180-1224)
- Ma Yuan (flourished 1190-1225)
- Liang Kai (early 13th century)
For brusk biographies, see: Famous Chinese Painters: Song Dynasty.
• Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
- Qian Xuan (c.1235-1301)
- Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322)
- Ren Renfa (1255-1328)
- Huang Gongwang (1269-1354)
- Wu Zhen (1280-1354)
- Ni Zan (1301-74)
- Wang Meng (1308-85)
For short biographies, see: Famous Chinese Painters: Yuan Dynasty.
• Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
- Dai Jin (1388-1462)
- Shen Zhou (1427-1509)
- Wu Wei (1459-1508)
- Tang Yin (1470-1523)
- Wen Zhengming (1470-1559)
- Qiu Ying (c.1494-1552)
- Lu Zhi (1496-1576)
- Jiang Song (c.1500)
- Xu Wei (1521-93)
- Ding Yunpeng (1547-1621)
- Dong Qichang (1555-1636)
- Cui Zizhong (c.1594-1644)
- Xiao Yuncong (1596-1673)
- Xiang Shengmo (1597-1658)
- Chen Hongshou (1599-1652)
For curt biographies, run into: Famous Chinese Painters: Ming Dynasty.
• Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
- Wang Shimin (1592-1680)
- Wang Jian (1598-1677)
- Hongren (1610-64)
- Kuncan/ Shi Qi (1612-73)
- Gong Xian (c.1618-89)
- Bada Shanren/ Zhu Da (1626-1705)
- Wang Hui (1632-1717)
- Wu Li (1632-1718)
- Yun Shouping (1633-90)
- Daoji/ Shitao (1642-1707)
- Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715)
- Shangguan Zhou (1665-1750)
- Leng Mei (c.1677-1742)
- Hua Yan (1682-1765)
- Gao Fenghan (1683-1748)
- Zou Yigui (1686-1772)
- Huang Shen (1687-1766)
- Lang Shining/
- Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1768)
- Yuan Jiang (c.1690-1724)
- Zheng Xie (1693-1765)
- Luo Ping (1733-99)
- Tang Yifen (1778-1853)
- Ju Lian (1824-1904)
- Zhao Zhiqian (1829-84)
For brusk biographies, run into: Famous Chinese Painters: Qing Dynasty.
• Famous Modern Chinese Artists
- Qi Baishi (1863-1957)
- Gao Jianfu (1879-1951)
- Gao Qifeng (1889-1933)
- Zhu Qizhan (b.1892)
- Xu Beihong (1895-1953)
- Pu Xinyu (1896-1963)
- Pan Tianshou (1897-1971)
- Zhang Daqian (1899-1983)
- Lin Fengmian (1900-91)
- Fu Baoshi (1904-65)
- Wang Jiqian/ C.C. Wang (b.1907)
- Li Keran (1907-89)
- Lui Shoukun (1919-75)
- Wu Guanzhong (b.1919)
- Liu Guosong (b.1932)
- He Huaishuo (b.1941)
For short biographies, meet: Famous Mod Chinese Painters: 20th Century.
• Famous Contemporary Chinese Artists
- Zhang Xiaogang (b.1958)
- Zeng Fanzhi (b.1964)
- Yue Minjun (b.1962)
- Wang Guangyi (b.1957)
- Liu Xiaodong (b.1963)
- Cai Guo-Qiang (b.1957)
- Yan Pei-Ming (b.1960)
- Chen Yifei (b.1946)
- Fang Lijun (b.1963)
- Liu Ye (b.1964)
- Zhou Chunya (b.1955)
For brusque bios, meet: Famous Contemporary Chinese Painters: 20th Century.
Menstruum of Disunity (221-589 CE)
Gu Kaizhi (c.344-c.406)
Born in Jiangsu province. One of the earliest of import painters of antiquity known by name. He is known primarily as a effigy painter and the source of one of the ii main styles of effigy painting (the source of the other being Wu Daozi). By the 9th century, Gu's style was characterised as exhibiting fine continuous line, with a sensitive rendering of character. The almost famous painting attributed to him, a hand-gyre entitled The Admonitiom of the Courtroom Instructress, in the British Museum, is probably a close copy of sixth-century provenance. Other paintings linked with his name include diverse copies of the Nymph of the Luo River.
Lu Tanwei (flourished 465-72)
Was active in the reign of Mingdi of the Vocal (465-72). Though non one of his fine art paintings has survived it has been argued that the brick reliefs portraying The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove and Rong Qiqi, found in imperial tombs of the Southern Dynasties at Nanjing and in Danyang county, Jiangsu province, may well exist based on his piece of work.
Zhang Sengyou (flourished 500-fifty)
Official in the Southern Dynasties under the Liang dynasty. Comparing his figure style with that of other early on masters, Zhang Yanyuan wrote that Zhang Sengyou obtained the mankind, Lu Tanwei the bone, and Gu Kaizhi the spirit of their subjects. He painted religious and figural subjects on the walls of Buddhist and Daoist temples, and also landscapes. The V Planets and Xx-8 Constellations, Osaka Municipal Museum, Japan, a copy possibly fabricated after a Tang composition, is the only surviving work associated with his name.
For the history and development of painting in China, please encounter: Chinese Fine art Timeline (c.eighteen,000 BCE - present).
Tang dynasty (618-906)
Yan Liben (d.673)
Official who became Prime number Minister under the Emperor Gaozong (649-83). Every bit the leading figure painter of the seventh century, he is recorded every bit having portrayed dignitaries and tribute bearers who visited Chang'an, the Tang majuscule. He besides helped to design the mausoleum of the Emperor Taizong (d.649), at Zhaoling, including portraits of the emperor's six favourite war steeds, which survive in the form of bas-relief sculptures. Portraits of Thirteen Emperors, a mitt-scroll in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the finest surviving example of his portrait art.
Li Sixun (651-716)
Relative of the imperial family who held high positions at court. He and his son Li Zhaodao are known for their colourful 'bluish and greenish' landscape painting, using azurite blue, malachite green and golden. Retrospectively, Li Sixun was considered to be the founder of the Northern school of Chinese painting, as defined by Dong Qichang. Although no original works survive, the painting of Tang Ming Huang'southward Flying to Shu, NPM, Taipei, affords a fine case of Tang composition in the 'blue and green' manner, with alpine mountains and distant plains glimpsed through narrow defiles.
Weichi Yiseng (flourished late 7th-early on eighth century)
Member of the majestic house of Khotan. His figure scyle was characterised by agitated draperies. A handscroll of figures in the Berenson collection, Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Italy, is associated with his proper noun.
Wang Wei (699-759)
The well-nigh famous poet and painter of Tang Dynasty art, he is named by Dong Qichang as the source of the Southern school of painting. An official equally well as an agog Buddhist, he painted both Buddhist and Daoist subjects and retired to his escape at Wangchuan Villa. Here he obviously painted landscapes using the technical innovation of ink launder or broken ink, pomo. Although no paintings of his have survived in the original, Portrait of the Scholar Fu Sheng, Osaka, and Clearing afterwards Snow on the River, Ogawa collection, Kyoto, are both associated with his name. For a guide to the aesthetic principles behind traditional painting in China, come across: Traditional Chinese Art: Characteristics.
Wu Daozi (flourished 710-760)
Considered i of Cathay's greatest figure painters, his style contrasts that of Gu Kaizhi. He is said to have used an impetuous brush-stroke, with thick and thin lines of uneven width and cleaved outlines, scattering dots and strokes to create a three-dimensional upshot. Wu served every bit a court painter during the reign of Xuanzong (712-56). He travelled a lot and executed wall paintings in many Buddhist and Daoist temples in Chang'an and Luoyang. He is likewise famous as a landscape painter, just his work now survives simply in rubbings from engraved stones, such as The Black Warrior (Tortoise and Snake).
Han Gan (c.715-781)
Famous painter of horses and grooms, he was summoned by Emperor Xuanzong (712-56) to paint the imperial horses. Shining White in the Night, a portrait of 1 of these, formerly in the collection of Sir Percival David, is his nearly reliably attributed work, at present in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, New York.
Zhang Yanyuan (b.815)
Wrote Lidai minghuaji (A Record of the Famous Painters of all the Dynasties) in 847 after the destruction of many Buddhist temples and their wall paintings in the religious persecution (842-5) of the Huichang reign. This work is the most important source of information on early painting and theory in China.
Guanxiu (832-912)
Monk painter, famous higher up all for his craggy representation of Buddhist arhats, preserved in Nippon and attributed to him.
For the influence of Tang painters on the civilisation of Korea, please see: Korean Fine art (c.3,000 BCE onwards).
V Dynasties and X Kingdoms (907-sixty)
Jing Hao (c.870-925)
Landscape painter and the author of a famous treatise on painting, Bifaji. Travellers in a Snowy Landscape (excavated from a tomb), is i of his works. (Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City).
Guan Tong (flourished c.907-23)
Afterward the fall of the Tang dynasty he became a subject of the later Liang dynasty (907-23), which ruled north Prc, and was admired, along with Fan Kuan and Li Cheng, as one of the three greatest landscape painters of the tenth century. Jing Hao was his teacher early in his career. In his later on years he painted with a relatively free, unlaboured and sketchy brushwork. Waiting for the Ferry, NPM, Taipei.
Li Cheng (919-67)
I of the about influential masters of the 5 Dynasties and early on Northern Song, known for his wintry landscapes, peculiarly for his leafless trees. He is said to have used ink very sparingly. He came from a family unit of scholar-officials and was himself a scholar. Probably no original works by him survive, but Lonely Monastery amid Clearing Peaks, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, is a fine Northern Vocal painting attributed to him.
Dong Yuan (d.962)
From Nanjing, Jiangsu province. His fame rests on his landscapes, which greatly influenced the leading masters of the late Yuan period (fourteenth century). He was later named every bit the leading master of Dong Qichang'south Southern school of mural painting. He and his follower Juran painted river landscapes textured with long, soft, earthy brushstrokes, his mountain slopes gently rounded and piled with boulders, moist and misty like the actual landscapes of the Jiangnan (lower Yangzi) region where he worked. Attributed paintings include Xiao and Xiang Rivers, Gugong, Beijing, and Wintry Forests and Lake Shores, Kurokawa Institute, Hyogo, Japan.
Shi Ke (d.975)
Famous for his humorous subjects and wall paintings. Ordered by the Emperor Taizu to paint Buddhist and Daoist figures in the Xiangguo monastery in the uppercase, Kaifeng. Two Patriarchs Harmonising their Minds, Tokyo National Museum, though possibly a later re-create, is the oldest extant example of Chan (Zen) painting with garments portrayed by crude brushwork and faces delineated in fine detail.
Juran (flourished 960-85)
Monk painter and follower of Dong Yuan , using similar 'hemp-fibre' strokes, interspersed with rounded 'alum-caput' boulders. Seeking the Dao in the Fall Mountains and Xiao Yi Seizing the Lanting, NPM, Taipei; Buddhist Monastery on a Mountainside, Cleveland Museum, Ohio. The British Museum has an impressive landscape hanging scroll bearing his name just really a twentieth-century forgery past Zhang Dagian (Chang Dai-ch'ien).
Works by Unknown Painters: Five Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms
The British Museum has a large drove of anonymous Buddhist manuscripts, textiles and paintings which were discovered in cave 17 at the Caves of the Chiliad Buddhas, Dunhuang, Gansu province, in the endmost years of the nineteenth century. Marc Aurel Stein, the first Westerner to visit the site later on the discovery, nerveless some 5 hundred drawings, paintings and prints and over ten thousand manuscript scrolls from this cavern. About two hundred of the paintings and prints are in the British Museum, the residuum in New Delhi, and the manuscripts in the British Library. Other paintings from the aforementioned source are in the Pelliot drove in the Musee Guimet, Paris, and further manuscripts in the Bibliothegue Nationale, Paris. The paintings, on silk, hemp cloth or newspaper, include votive paintings dedicated by lay Buddhists, also every bit large compositions depicting the Pure Lands or paradises in which they hoped to be reborn. The British Museum also has a number of other anonymous religious paintings, mainly of Buddhist and occasionally of Daoist figures. Among them, The Thirteenth Arhat, Ingada (1345), and Four Arhats and Attendants (Ming dynasty, fifteenth century) are both single examples from sets of paintings of arhats or luohans, guardians of the Buddhist law oft represented in People's republic of china in groups of sixteen, eighteen or v hundred.
NOTE: For more about the painters of India, meet the following:
• Classical Indian Painting (Up to 1150 CE)
Ajanta, Bagh, Sigiriya, Badami, Panamalai, Sittanavasal, Tanjore, and Polotmaruva schools of painting, and more than.
• Post-Classical Indian Painting (14th-16th Century)
Gujarat illuminations, Hindu art in Orissa, and more.
• Mughal Painting (16th-19th Century)
Babur, Akbar, Jahangir and Aurengzeb painters, and more.
• Rajput Painting (16th-19th Century)
Rajastan, Mewar, Malva, Bundi, Kishangar painters, and more.
Vocal Dynasty (960-1270)
Fan Kuan (c.960-1030)
Born Huayuan, Shaanxi province. Famous for austere and thou landscapes. Together with Li Cheng, he developed the and so-called monumental style of landscape. He was known for his 'raindrop' surface modelling strokes (cun). He chose to alive in a barren, mountainous area in Taihua in the Zhongnan mountains. Surviving works include Travellers among Streams and Mountains, NPM, Taipei.
Yan Wengui (967-1044)
Built-in Wuxing, Zhejiang province. Academy painter under the tertiary Song emperor. His way was every bit monumental as that of his contemporary Fan Kuan, with a show of profusion and turbulence in his paintings. Works include Temples amid Streams and Mountains, NPM, Taipei; River and Mountains with Temples, hand-scroll, Osaka City Museum, Japan.
Xu Daoning (c.970-1051)
From Chang'an, Shaanxi province. Like Guo Xi, he was a follower of Li Cheng and regarded very highly by his contemporaries. His Fishing in a Mount Stream, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas Urban center, is a royal handscroll with fishermen and travellers, a roadside inn and secluded pavilions, all dwarfed by an outlandish series of precipirous cliffs and stark mountain ranges.
Guo Xi (c.1020-c.1090)
One of the top painters during the era of Song Dynasty Art (960-1279), he was born in northern Henan province. According to his contemporaries, he was a skillful landscape painter in the Royal Academy. He was likewise the author of an essay entitled 'Lofty Message of Forests and Streams', an exceedingly valuable source of information on Song attitudes to landscape and techniques of composition and brushwork. He painted landscapes after the style of Li Cheng, using texture strokes and ink wash to create the illusion of space and altitude, with more complex compositions than those of earlier painters such as Fan Kuan. Mountains were the dominant elements of his compositions, changing in appearance according to the seasons; his paintings brandish atmospheric effects which would be further adult by the Southern Vocal painters. Early Spring, NPM, Taipei, is an impressive hanging scroll on silk, signed and dated 1072.
Su Shi (1036-1101)
Famous statesman, poet, calligrapher, art critic and painter of bamboo, also known as Su Dongpo. With those in his circle, such equally the bamboo painter Wen Tong and the calligrapher Huang Tingjian, he established the concept of wenrenhua, that is, painting by literati, arguing that painting could share the values and status of poetry. In his view, 'natural genius and originality' were more important than form-likeness in painting. He held official posts but was also banished several times during his career. None of his paintings survive, but Dry Tree, Bamboo and Stone, Shanghai Museum, is attributed to him and provides clues to his discipline matter and way. Many examples of his calligraphy are however extant.
Li Gonglin/ Li Longmian (c.1049-1106)
Built-in Shucheng, Anhui province. Nigh famous effigy painter of the Northern Vocal period. He painted in baimiao (outline cartoon), a fine linear manner derived from Gu Kaizhi, associated with historical themes and Buddhist divinities, and as well in the Wu Daozi tradition with brusk and lively, fluctuating brushwork. He was also appreciated equally a painter of horses and landscapes. Thus, Li was the firstr artist to transmit the styles of several past masters rather than that of merely i, establishing classic standards in each genre. V Tribute Horses and Grooms (present whereabouts unknown) was the finest example of his work; Metamorphoses of Heavenly Beings, British Museum, is a close copy of his style, perhaps early Ming in date.
Li Tang (c. 1050-1130)
Born Sancheng, northern Henan province. University painter under the Song Emperor Huizong of the Northern Vocal in the majuscule Bianliang (present-day Kaifeng) and then under Gaozong of the Southern Song at Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou). Equally a transitional painter, his landscapes include subjects on a smaller scale than those of the great Northern Vocal masters, and his techniques innovate the axe-cut stroke produced with a slanting brush. Extant works include Autumn and Wintertime Landscapes, Koto-in, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto; Whispering Pines in the Gorges, dated 1120, NPM, Taipei; Gathering Herbs, Gugong, Beijing.
Mi Fu (1051-1107)
Born Hubei province. An intellectual as well as a painter and calligrapher, and besides known for his disquisitional connoisseurship of paintings and calligraphy. He was the writer of Huashi (The History of Painting). He painted foliage with large, moisture dots and rocks with soft modelling. Just Verdant Mountains with Pine Trees, NPM, Taipei, is extant; more works survive by his son Mi Youren (1086-1165).
Zhao Danian/ Zhao Lingrang (flourished c. 1080-1100)
Descendant of the Vocal imperial family and collector of ancient paintings. His paintings are more intimate than those of most of his Northern Song contemporaries, existence on a small scale, with a simplicity of design and a new realism. Extant work: River Village in Articulate Summer, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Huizong (1082-1135)
Effectively the final Northern Song emperor (ruled 1101-25) before both he and his successor were captured and exiled. He was an aesthete and eminent calligrapher and painter, specialising in birds and floral still life painting. He surrounded himself with the courtroom artists of the University of painting and took an agile part in supervising them, neglecting land affairs. Paintings include Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (copied from the Tang dynasty artist Zhang Xuan); Listening to the Qin, Gugong, Beijing; Gardenia and Lichi with Birds, British Museum a handscroll, attributed to him but probably by a court artist, showing the colourful and shut description of nature then valued at his court, and signed with the imperial cipher.
Ma Hezhi (flourished c.1131-62)
From Zhejiang province. Official at the court of the Southern Song Emperor Gaozong, who commissioned him to illustrate the Confucian classic Shijing (Book of Songs) every bit patt of a serial of paintings with themes proving the legitimacy of his rule, in the face of the occupation of north People's republic of china by the Jin. Illustrations to the Odes of Chen (British Museum) is one of the finest surviving examples of this series with 10 scenes accompanied by the appropriate odes in the calligraphy of Emperor Gaozong. 2 of the odes from this curl were reproduced by Dong Qichang equally models of Gaozong's writing; on some of the series the calligraphy was really written by a court calligrapher (though attributed to the emperor himself). Ma used the so-called 'orchid leaf' and 'grasshopper-waist' style of fluctuating brushwork to depict the reverence necessary for such a canonised work of literature, transforming the fluctuating drapery lines of the Tang painter Wu Daozi.
Zhang Zeduan (flourished early twelfth century)
From Shandong province. A colophon on his sole surviving piece of work informs us that he was a member of the Hanlin Academy, specialising in buildings, boats, carriages and bridges, etc. His extant masterpiece is the handscroll Going up the River on Qingming Twenty-four hour period, Gugong, Beijing, a commemoration of the varied and busy scenes in and around the capital of the Notthern Vocal, painted shortly earlier the metropolis was captured by the Jin in 1126.
Xia Gui (flourished 1180-1224)
Painter, at the Hangzhou Academy, of landscapes, and Buddhist and Daoist figures. He later on retired from court life to a Chan (Zen) Buddhist temple. He was a younger contemporary of Ma Yuan. Extant works include Twelve Views from a Thatched Cottage, handscroll, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City; River Landscape in Rain and Air current, fan painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Ma Yuan (flourished 1190-1225)
Fourth generation of a famous family at the University of painting and himself a foremost Southern Song painter, strongly influenced by Li Tang. The soft scenery around Hangzhou, conducive to intimate landscape scenes, encouraged painters to plough away from the monumental Northern Song landscape style. The Academy painters Ma Yuan and Xia Gui, oftentimes referred to as the Ma-Xia school, used ink washes to create effects of light and mist, employing a 'ane-corner' type of composition. Their style was to influence the court painters of the early on Ming dynasty, such as Li Zai, when Chinese rule was re-established afterward the fall of the Mongol Yuan dynasty. Works include Feast by Lantern Light, NPM, Taipei; Bare Willows and Afar Mountains, fan painting, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Composing Poetry on a Leap Outing, manus-scroll, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City.
Liang Kai (early on 13th century)
From Shandong province. Noted for his figures, landscapes, and Daoist and Buddhist subjects. 'Painter in attendance' at Hangzhou (Southern Vocal capital) painting academy, from 1201. Extant works: Sakyamuni Leaving the Mountains, Shima Euiuichi collection, Tokyo; The Supreme Daoist Master Property Court, Wango Weng collection, a detailed outline sketch for a wall painting in a Daoist temple; The 6th Patriarch Chopping Bamboo, Tokyo National Museum, a fine example of Chan subjects that became popular in Japan every bit Zen painting; The Poet Li Taibo, NPM, Taipei, a masterpiece of economy in brushwork.
Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
Qian Xuan (c.1235-1301)
Built-in Wuxing, Zhejiang province. Gained the jinshi (doctoral) degree in the Jing-ding reign (1260-iv) and was learned in literature and music; he never served the Mongol authorities. Closely followed by Zhao Mengfu, he was the commencement to do a deliberate archaism, specially in landscape. Domicile in the Mountains, Gugong, Beijing, is in the 'blue and green' mode. His blossom paintings are finely detailed merely with a certain blandness, shared past his calligraphy, unremarkably inscribed on the same paper equally the painting itself. Extant works: Young Noble on a Horse, British Museum; Pear Blossoms (formerly Sir Percival David collection), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Early Fall, Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan.
Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322)
Relation of the Song dynastic royal family unit who notwithstanding took office under the Yuan dynasty, for which he was much criticised. He was the foremost calligrapher and painter from the era of Yuan Dynasty art (1279-1368). In painting he followed the lead of Qian Xuan in cultivating the 'spirit of antiguity', only his art could only have been possible at this time. For instance, Autumn Colours at the Qiao and Hua Mountains, NPM, Taipei, was painted for a friend who, considering of the Jin rule of northward Communist china in the Southern Song period, had never been able to travel to his native commune. The Mind Landscape of Xie Youyu, Princeton Art Museum, New Jersey, reflects Zhao'south own ambivalent position by portraying a 4th-century scholar-recluse who served at court however preserved the purity of his mind. The Water Village, dated 1302, Gugong, Beijing, exhibits the unified ground aeroplane and simplified brushwork that would be emulated past tardily Yuan masters of landscape.
Ren Renfa (1255-1328)
From Songjiang, Jiangsu province. Bureaucrat and painter of horses and landscapes. His inscription on Fat and Lean Horses, Gugong, Beijing, likens the 2 horses to different types of official, i who grows fat in office, the other who gives his all to serve the people.
Huang Gongwang (1269-1354)
Born Jiangsu province. One of the 4 masters of the tardily Yuan. Along with Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng, he pioneered a landscape style that was to inspire countless variations by later painters, bringing mural wholly within the repertoire of the scholar-painter or wenren. Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, dated 1350, NPM, Taipei, is his most famous piece of work, displaying a limited range of motifs to create a monumental composition of rivers, forests and mount ranges of unlimited scope.
Wu Zhen (1280-1354)
Some other of the four masters of the late Yuan. His mural paintings are, similar those of Huang Gongwang, in the tradition of Juran and Dong Yuan. They prove the use of a well-soaked brush and deliberate, rounded strokes and dots. The NPM, Taipei, has a number of his paintings including Twin Junipers, The Fundamental Mountain and Stalks of Bamboo abreast a Rock.
Ni Zan (1301-74)
Tertiary of the four masters of the late Yuan. Also a poet, calligrapher and mural painter. From a wealthy family unit in Jiangsu province, he gave upwardly his fortune to lead a unproblematic life on a boat. He is famous for his dry ink brushwork executed with a slanted castor, and for his sparse dots of intense black. The Rongxi Studio, dated 1372, NPM, Taipei, and Autumn Clearing over a Line-fishing Society, Shanghai Museum, both exhibit his favourite subject, a modest pavilion with bare trees, and favourite compositional scheme, with foreground rocks, a stretch of water and distant hills.
Wang Meng (1308-85)
Grandson of Zhao Mengfu, from Zhejiang province, surviving briefly into the Ming dynasty and dying in prison house. A landscape painter in the manner of Dong Yuan and Juran, and one of the four masters of the late Yuan, his main contribution to Yuan painting is the portrayal of mountains as colossal features, exuberant, executed with an extremely varied and rich repertoire of brush techniques, in contrast to the spare and dry manner of Ni Zan. His
Qingbian Mountains, dated 1366, is in Shanghai Museum; Domicile in Summer Mountains, at Gugong, Beijing.
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Dai Jin (1388-1462)
From Qiantang (Hangzhou). Modelled his landscape style on that of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui of the Southern Song. In the Xuande reign (1426-35) he served for a short fourth dimension at courtroom. Despite the overtones of the Academy style, his brushwork is distinctively free and lively. Surviving paintings include: Fishermen on a River, Freer Gallery, Washington DC; Returning Late from a Springtime Walk, NPM, Taipei.
Shen Zhou (1427-1509)
Earliest and leading chief of the Wu school. He preferred to live in retirement in Suzhou than to serve at the Ming courtroom. A talented calligrapher and poet, as well as a painter, he used the brush styles of the late Yuan landscape paintets as vehicles for his ain expression, being specially at abode with that of Wu Zhen, while as well striving to emulate the economy of Ni Zan's brushwork. Besides landscapes, he is known for his figure drawing from life, such as the Anthology of Plants, Animals and Insects (xvi leaves), dated 1494, PM, Taipei.
Misty River and Layered Ranges, Liaoning Museum, is a handscroll in the thousand Song mode; Lofty Mount Lu, 1467, NPM, Taipei, has all the density and richness of texture associated with Wang Meng . At other times, Shen Zhou's depiction of actual places has a refreshing simplicity, capturing essential features with a minimum of detail. Peach Blossom Valley (attributed), British Museum provides some idea of his brushwork and large calligraphy modelled on the style of the Northern Song calligrapher Huang Tingjian.
Wu Wei (1459-1508)
Worked in Jiangxia, Hubei province (where he may have moved from Hunan). His patron in Nanjing, the Duke of Chengguo, was a swell collector in whose collections Wu studied the refined baimiao ink mono-chrome, linear effigy style of Li Gonglin which is apparent in many of Wu's early paintings such as the handscroll, The Iron Flute, 1484, Shanghai Museum. Serving at court in the Hongzhi reign (1488-1505), his version of the Ma-Xia style of landscape painting establish favour, and became pop, making him a leading chief of the Zhe school. His mature way was characterised by swift, even brash, brushwork afterwards much criticised by Dong Qichang. The Pleasures of Fishing, Gugong, Beijing, is a fine example of his mature fashion. The British Museum has several paintings acquired when Wu Wei'southward work was not highly regarded by Chinese collectors, the near important being the handscroll, Strolling Entertainers, and Lady Laoyu with the Luan Phoenix.
Tang Yin (1470-1523)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Student of Zhou Chen (d.1536) who also taught Qiu Ying. Tang Yin was befriended by the father of Wen Zhengming and moved amid Suzhou'south literary circles. He was renowned for his portraits of women and for impressive landscapes inscribed with poems in his distinctive hand. Run into Thatched Cottage at West Mount, British Museum.
Wen Zhengming (1470-1559)
From Suzhou, Jiangsu province. One of the greatest Ming painters and calligraphers, and the most important painter of the Wu school after his instructor Shen Zhou. He served briefly at court after unsuccessfully attempting the tightly constrained land examinations ten times. Equally a calligrapher, he was egually at home with running script in big or over-sized characters and with precise small regular script. In painting he was as versatile, bringing finer detailing and a lyrical use of colour to Shen Zhou'south mural style and depicting also figures, ink bamboo and other literati subjecrs. His followers of the Wu school in the 16th century included several members of his own family. Encounter: Washing the Feet in the Sword Pool, British Museum; Wintry Copse, British Museum; A Thousand Cliffs Vying in Splendour, NPM, Taipei; A Myriad Valleys Competing in Menstruation, Nanjing Museum.
Qiu Ying (c.1494-1552)
Born Taicang, Jiangsu province, and lived in Suzhou. Named with Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin every bit one of rhe 4 Masters of Suzhou, he was a professional person painter and educatee of Zhou Chen, as well as existence at home with literati painters. He was a brilliant figure painter and equally skilled in landscapes in the archaic 'blue and greenish' manner, on account of which many afterwards imitations of this style are signed with his name. The different aspects of his fine art are illustrated by Zhao Mengfu Writing the Sutra in Substitution for a Cup of Tea, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Passing a Summer Day in the Shade of Banana Palms, NPM, Taipei; and Saying Cheerio at Xunyang, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas Metropolis.
Lu Zhi (1496-1576)
Built-in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Landscape painrer and poet, follower of Wen Zhengming. He plainly never held role and eventually retired to a mountain retreat on Mount Zhixing, nearly Suzhou, where he continued to paint. In his landscapes of the Suzhou region, Ni Zan was evidently an inspirarion to Lu Zhi who emulated his angular, faceted forms and dry brushwork, often adding a pale vermilion or stake light-green. See; Huqiu Shan Tu (Tiger Colina), Gugong, Beijing; Landscape in the Manner of Ni Zan, Brirish Museum.
Jiang Song (c.1500)
From Nanjing. Zhe school painter who captured in his landscape paintings 'all the mists of Yiangnan'. Like other Zhe school painters, he was out of favour with collectors in the Qing dynasty and Taking a Lute to Visit a Friend, British Museum had the original signature and seals removed, and a characterization added attributing it to Xu Daoning of the Song dynasty; but the ink wash foliage of the foreground trees, and other details, are unmistakably those of Jiang Vocal.
Xu Wei (1521-93)
One of the greatest painters during the era of Ming Dynasty art, born in Shanyin, Zhejiang province. Poet and calligrapher who excelled at plants and flowers in a free or even wild ink wash manner, which was to be a major influence on the painting of Bada Shanren. Ink Flowers, long handscroll on paper, Nanjing Museum, is i of his major works, culminating in a magnificent stand of banana palms.
Ding Yunpeng (1547-1621)
Born Xiuning, Anhui province. Ding was a professional painter of landscapes, figures and particularly Buddhist and Daoist subjects. The God of Literature, 1596, British Museum is an example of his refined and detailed figure painting in ink monochrome; his paintings in color are equally accomplished. The wood block-printed book, Chengshi Moyuan, contains some notable designs for ink cakes. Imitations of his work are fairly mutual among Buddhist and Daoist effigy subjects.
Dong Qichang (1555-1636)
Born Yiangsu province. The dominant figure of Chinese painting in the late Ming and thereafter. Beginning with the study of calligraphy, he went on to search for and analyse the surviving masterpieces of Vocal and Yuan painting, with the aim of restoring aboriginal values to the painting of his ain mean solar day. Clarity of composition, clear outlines and appropriate motifs were of the greatest importance to him. In the course of authenticating old paintings, he wrote extensively and proposed the theory of the Northern and Southern schools. According to his theory, literati painters should follow the Southern school exclusively, relying on brushwork and eschewing excessive detail or painterly furnishings. He was followed past Wang Shimin, who executed a large anthology of reduced copies of Song and Yuan paintings in his own drove under Dong'due south guidance, and by other painters of the Orthodox school, such equally Wang Jian, Wang Hui and Wang Yuangi. The short handscroll, Rivers and Mountains on a Clear Autumn Day, later on the Yuan painter Huang Gongwang, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, is a fine example of his style and arroyo to by masters. The British Museum has a Landscape and a hand-roll (attributed) of studies of rocks and trees, with notes written beside them.
Cui Zizhong (c.1594-1644)
Major figure painter of the late Ming dynasty, usually paired with Chen Hong-shou - ('Cui in the northward and Chen in the south'). Cui was an independent artist following no particular school; a solitary and aloof character, somewhat of a recluse who eventually starved himself to expiry rather than ask for help. He was probably a member of a Daoist sect and painted many scenes from Buddhist and Daoist literature and legends. His figures oft refer to antique models and he concentrated on eccentric archaisms in an original manner. See: Xu jingyang Ascending to Heaven, NPM, Taipei.
Xiao Yuncong (1596-1673)
From Anhui province. The first of the Masters of Xin-an, and an yimin or 'left-over' subject after the fall of the Ming dynasty. The early Qing monk painter Hongren , another of the Anhui masters, was his pupil. Works include: Reading in Snowy Mountains, Gugong, Beijing; Frosty Woods, handscroll, British Museum.
Xiang Shengmo (1597-1658)
Born Yiaxing, Zhejiang province. Son of the great collector Xiang Yuanbian (1525-90), his paintings exhibit rather precisely delineated features and elegant colour in both landscapes and flower paintings. his Reading in the Autumn Wood, dated 1623-4, is in the British Museum.
Chen Hongshou (1599-1652)
From Zhuji, near Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. On failing the official examinations, he began to concentrate on his painting in club to earn a living. Early on he developed a distinctive style and a creative transformation of the past that would identify him as an creative person worthy of observe. His effigy paintings were based on archaistic paintings of historical or Buddhist subjeCts. He was paired from his stay in Beijing (1640-three) with the creative person Cui Zizhong ('Cui in the north and Chen in the s'). He was best known equally a painter of figures working in the fine linear mode of the fourth-century primary Gu Kaizhi, but he also painted landscapes and designed woods-cutting illustrations and playing cards. His Female person Immortals is at Gugong, Beijing. In the British Museum, besides several attributed works, there is a fine album leaf, Landscape, datable and a large hanging scroll, Chrysanthemums.
Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
Wang Shimin (1592-1680)
Built-in Jiangsu province. Because he himself had a large drove of erstwhile masters, Wang Shimin was the best placed of the Orthodox masters to put the theories of Dong Qichang into do. He did so in a famous album of exact copies, in reduced size, entitled Within the Small See the Large, NPM, Taipei, for which Dong wrote the championship and inscriptions. In his own mural paintings, Wang Shimin'southward preferred manner is derived from that of the Yuan chief Wang Meng. The British Museum's Landscape, dated 1654, is inspired by the brush way of another Yuan master, Huang Gongwang.
Wang Jian (1598-1677)
Born Jiangsu province. The second of the 4 Wangs in the group of six Orthodox masters, specialising like Wang Shimin in landscapes later Song and Yuan masters. Mural after Juran, British Museum exemplifies how the Orthodox masters used ancient styles and motifs (here those of the 10th-century primary Juran), to produce variations in their own distinctive hands.
Hongren (1610-64)
From Anhui province. One of the Four Monk painters (with Bada Shanren, Kuncan and Daoji), a Ming loyalist who became a monk when the Ming dynasty complanate. He was the first painter to display a distinctive Anhui mode, and was especially addicted of painting Mount Huang, one of Cathay's most spectacular mountains. The album past him in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, features individual mural elements each labelled with a single character. The Coming of Autumn, Ching Yuan Chai collection, China, shows the same precision in a complete landscape composition.
Kuncan/ Shi Qi (1612-73)
Born Hunan province. Individualist and 1 of the Four Monk painters (with Hongren, Bada Shanren and Daoji). He early on became a Chan (Zen) Buddhist monk and eventually abbot of a monastery nearly Nanjing. His paintings are characterised past crowded and restless compositions in which the landscape is broken up into numerous mount ridges, valleys and rocky outcrops. His brushwork has a dry earthy quality which is frequently enriched past coloured washes. Autumn and Winter, two anthology leaves, British Museum were done for a friend, Cheng Zhengkui, in 1666 and are among his finest works. Spring and Summer, completing the ready of four, are now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, and the Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, respectively.
Gong Xian (c.1618-89)
One of the Eight Masters of Nanjing, and an yimin or left-over bailiwick of the Ming dynasty, who belonged to a restoration society and subsequently became a recluse. In his rather sombre landscape paintings he merged ink washes with 'piled ink' or layers of brushwork, creating a awe-inspiring outcome. A Thousand Peaks and a Myriad Ravines, c.1670, Drenowatz collection, Rietberg Museum, Zurich, shows him at his most claustrophobic; the British Museum has a more than open Lake View.
Bada Shanren/ Zhu Da (1626-1705)
Some other of the Four Monk painters and a major figure in Qing Dynasty art (1644-1911). He was a scion of the Ming royal house and hence another an yimin or left-over subject when the Ming dynasty vicious in 1644. His early paintings include albums of flowets and rocks, with recondite poems, and are signed with a variety of obscure names. Later he used quizzical depictions of birds and fish to allude to his distress nether Manchu rule, too painting lotuses with broken stems, and ink landscapes. The British Museum has a hanging roll, Rocks and Wutong Seeds and a minor Landscape.
Wang Hui (1632-1717)
The well-nigh versatile of the Orthodox painters, coached and encouraged, even to the point of passing off his paintings as Song or Yuan originals, past Wang Shimin and Wang Jian. At courtroom in the 1690s he was in charge of producing the series of massive handscrolls describing the Kangxi emperor'south Tours of the S. The British Museum has only a pocket-size fan painting of his, merely the bearding handscroll, Snow Landscape, bearing the signature of Fan Kuan, is maybe close to Wang Hui's oeuvre.
Wu Li (1632-1718)
Built-in in Jiangsu province. Friend and gimmicky of Wang Hui and one of the leading Orthodox painters of the early on Qing. Together with Wang Hui he was instructed by Wang Jian and Wang Shimin and through them became acquainted with and influenced by the landscapes of the Four Masters of the Yuan dynasty, particularly Wang Meng. His orthodoxy was shown in his adoration for the ancient masters, yet he believed in manipulating the styles of the Song and Yuan masters to create an intensely personal way. Wu'due south paintings were much admired by his contemporaries. He eventually became a Jesuit priest in 1688 after which time he apparently painted relatively little. His Pine Wind from Myriad Valleys is in Cleveland Museum of Fine art, Ohio.
Yun Shouping (1633-90)
Blossom and landscape painter, friend and nigh contemporary of Wang Hui, and linked with the 4 Wangs and Wu Li as an Orthodox master. Deferring to Wang Hui in landscape, he is known chiefly for his paintings of flowers in the 'boneless' technique.
Daoji/ Shitao (1642-1707)
Descendant of the Ming imperial family unit. The fall of the Ming dynasty left him a wanderer, and he is known equally one of the Iv Monk painters (with Hongren, Kuncan and Bada Shanren). His Huayulu is i of the most of import of Chinese writings on painting, which he discusses from his concept of 'the single brushstroke'. In the aforementioned work, he strenuously defends his own originality: 'the beards and eyebrows of the ancients do not abound on my
face'. His handscroll painting in the Suzhou Museum, X Thousand Ugly Ink Dots, bears an inscription in which he declares his purpose to shock the past masters such as Mi Fu. Many of his paintings, such as Viii Views of the South, Brirish Museum, are closely linked with his own wanderings in early life; they are often complemented with his calligraphy in different styles to match the brushwork of the paintings.
Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715)
Born Jiangsu province. Grandson of Wang Shimin. Mural painter, youngest and arguably the most original of the Four Wangs. Perhaps his greatest work is the large coloured recreation of the handscroll, Wang Chuan Villa, in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, New York, a long-lost masterpiece of the Tang poet and painter Wang Wei, then, as at present, known only from a rubbing and late copies.
Shangguan Zhou (1665-1750)
Built-in Changting, Fujian province. Primarily a painter of somewhat rustic figures and landscapes, exemplified past the handscroll in the British Museum, The Fisherman's Paradise. Huang Shen was his pupil.
Leng Mei (c.1677-1742)
Built-in in Jiaozhou, Shandong province. Professional person courtroom painter, specialising in figure painting. He is associated with the Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione (known in China as Lang Shining), and introduced him to Chinese painting. His Wutong Shuangtu Tu (Two Rabbits Beneath a Wutong Tree) is at Gugong, Beijing. Paintings in the British Museum include: Portrait of a Lady; Manchu Official at the Door of his Library.
Hua Yan (1682-1765)
From Fujian province. Poet and calligrapher as well as painter, noted for his lively and meticulous renderings of birds, only likewise skilled at figures and landscapes. The Red Bird, Elliort collection, Princeton Art Museum, New Jersey; Mynah Birds and Squirrel, Freer Gallery, Washington DC.
Gao Fenghan (1683-1748)
Born Jiaoxian, Shandong province. Known early on in life for his poetry. He had an official career but never rose very loftier in rank. His right arm became paralysed in 1737 and thereafter he painted with his left hand. The British Museum has a fine set of fan paintings of landscapes and flowers, all painted before this upshot and an album of Flower Paintings after Designs from the Ten Bamboo Studio.
Zou Yigui (1686-1772)
Courtroom painter under the Qianlong emperor (ruled 1736-96) who commissioned him to pigment a pictorial colophon, Pine and Juniper Trees, British Museum at the end of the Gu Kaizhi handscroll, The Admonitions of the Courtroom Instructress, regarded as the almost valuable painting in the whole of the Palace drove, being installed by the emperor with but three others in a separate pavilion in the Forbidden City. Though at present separately mounted, it came to the British Museum with Gu'due south painting, and also bears the Qianlong emperor's seals.
Huang Shen (1687-1766)
Born Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. Pupil of Shangguan Zhou, and i of the Yangzhou Eccentrics. He painted figures and landscapes with lengthy inscriptions in a distinctive cursive manus. Surviving works include: Laozi (Ning Qi) and His Ox, and The Ix Dragons Rapids.
Lang Shining/ Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1768)
Born Milan, Italian republic. Castiglione became a Jesuit priest in 1707. He arrived in Macao in 1715 so went to Beijing where he remained until his death. At that place he became role of the group of Western directorate at the Chinese imperial court. He painted for three emperors, Kangxi, Yong-zheng and Qianlong, and also trained Chinese artists in Western techniques. Of all the missionary arrists who worked for the Qing emperors, Castiglione was pre-eminent. His paintings combined traditional Chinese watercolour techniques with the Western use of linear perspective and chiaroscuro. He excelled in religious painting, portraiture and the painting of animals, flowers and landscapes. See: Ten Horses and Nine Dogs, NPM, Taipei.
Yuan Jiang (c.1690-1724)
Born Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. Specialised, like Yuan Yao and Li Yin, in big landscapes, often with prominent architectural features, and equanimous in a grand manner reminiscent of the monumental landscape style of the Five Dynasties and Song. However, his brushwork, especially in the outlines of stone forms, betrays mannered forms that cannot exist mistaken for Song piece of work. Penglai, Isle of the Immortals, dated 1723, British Museum is a typical example of his treatment of legendary subjects.
Zheng Xie (1693-1765)
Born Yangzhou. Famous for paintings of subjects such as orchids and bamboo, interspersed with calligraphy in which the characters often brandish unusual variations. Orchids on Rocks, Crawford drove, New York. The British Museum has a handscroll, Chrysanthemums, Bamboo and Epidendrum, attributed to him.
Luo Ping (1733-99)
Built-in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. Called himself the 'Monk of the Flowery Temple'. He is regarded as one of the Viii Eccentrics of Yangzhou and became a student of Jin Nong, some other of the Viii Eccentrics. He travelled to Beijing, acquiring many patrons along the way, and was besides a good calligrapher and seal carver. He painted many portraits and one of his famous works is Guiqu Tu (a serial of paintings of ghosts and spirits). Paintings in the British Museum: Portraits of the Poets Wang Shizhen and Zhu Yizun; Monk nether a Palm Tree.
Tang Yifen (1778-1853)
Born Wujin, Jiangsu province. Tang'south mode belongs to that of those who in the 19th century were still followers of the Orthodox tradition of the 17th Century. The subject area thing of the garden was a popular one in China, where the garden was seen as a microcosm of the larger landscape, and the British Museum has a big handscroll entitled The Garden of Delight with many gimmicky colophons.
Ju Lian (1824-1904)
Born Guangdong province. Influenced by the Jiangsu painters such as Song Guangbao and Meng Jinyi who had come to Guangdong co teach painting, Ju Lian and his cousin Ju Chao became masters in the painting of flowers, insects and plants. Ju Lian was especially prolific in painting landscapes and figures. He and his cousin improved on the style of painting known as 'boneless': by sprinkling a white powder on to coloured areas they produced a bright and somewhat sleeky surface (zhuangfen) and by dripping water on to practical colours while they were yet wet they created subtle tonal gradations (zhuangfei). Encounter: Flowers, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong.
Zhao Zhiqian (1829-84)
Built-in Zhejiang province. Famous seal carver, poet and calligrapher. Besides established himself through his bloom paintings equally one of the foremost painters of the 19th century.
NOTE: See also the two great Japanese Ukiyo-due east artists from the Tokugawa Shogunate of the Edo Period in Japan: Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858).
Famous Modern Chinese Artists
Here is a selected listing of important twentieth-century Chinese artists from the China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the W.
Qi Baishi (1863-1957)
Born Hunan province. Began life equally a carpenter, and became a prolific painter of flowers, shrimps, venereal, insects and birds. As he remained in People's republic of china afterwards 1950 and painted everyday subjects, calculation his own calligraphy and seals also carved by himself, he became the best-known painter of the mid-twentieth century. The British Museum has a fine written report of Bodhidharma in a red robe, every bit well as flower paintings from his hand.
Gao Jianfu (1879-1951)
Born Panyu, Guangdong province. Together with Gao Qifeng and Chen Shuren (1883-1949), was 1 of the three founders of the Lingnan schoolhouse in Guangdong province. They were all influenced past before Qing painters such as Ju Lian, Ju Chao and Meng Jinyi, and all three likewise studied in Japan from 1906 to 1911, returning to participate in the revolution. They pioneered a new Chinese move in painting whereby they advocated the use of Western
perspective and chiaroscuro, and Japanese brush technigues, while still employing Chinese traditional ink and colour. Their pupils include Zhao Shao'ang and Li Xiongcai. Sepia, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong.
Gao Qifeng (1889-1933)
Born Panyu, Guangdong province. The brother of Gao Jianfu. He studied art in Japan and learned painting from his brother, with whom he formed part of the Lingnan schoolhouse. Run into: Cockerel and Hen nether a Begonia Tree, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong.
Zhu Qizhan (b.1892)
Born Taicang, Jiangsu province. Member of the Shanghai Painting Academy. As a student Zhu studied Western oil painting and later full-bodied on traditional Chinese styles. He paints landscapes and flowers in the bold brush fashion of Shanghai painters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of his landscapes are distinguished by the apply of vivid colour.
Xu Beihong (1895-1953)
Built-in Jiangsu province. Major figure in the modernisation of Chinese art. He visited Europe and Nippon and held a series of key educational activity positions where he advocated the study of realism. The theme for which he is all-time known in the West is horses, whose spirited movements he captured through rapid and abbreviated brushwork and ink washes. In China, his horses became a symbol of the indomitable national spirit. Run across: Two Horses, British Museum.
Pu Xinyu (1896-1963)
Built-in Beijing. A descendant of the Daoguang emperor, he received a classical education and a traditional training in Chinese painting. His paintings are based on the literati landscape tradition of the belatedly Ming and early Qing but he as well studied the piece of work of the Song mural masters. In 1949 he moved to Taiwan, and during the 1950s was regarded as the island's leading painter. He had many students, including Jiang Zhaoshen (b.1925).
Pan Tianshou (1897-1971)
Born Ninghai district, Zhejiang province. Received no formal training in painting or calligraphy only learned from painting manuals such as the Qing dynasty work, the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. In 1923 he went to Shanghai and taught at the Shanghai art college, and his works were influenced by masters of the Shanghai school. His painting followed traditional styles of landscape and bird and blossom painting.
Zhang Daqian (1899-1983)
Born Sichuan province. Versatile master of painting and bulldogged collector, who courted controversy in his personal life through his many forgeries of some of the most famous painters of the past, particularly of the individualist 17th-century painter Daoji/Shitao. Ii years spent at Dunhuang in the 1940s left him with a deep appreciation of bright colour and a lifelong interest in figure painting. 1 of his best-known forgeries is the large landscape, Dense Forests and Layered Peaks by the Monk Juran from Zhongling, signed
as Juran, in the British Museum. Another BM Landscape illustrates the more abstruse manner of his late years, when he lived in Brazil and California.
Lin Fengmian (1900-91)
Studied in French republic, returned to China only finally settled in Hong Kong. He wrote extensively on painting, trying to synthesise and harmonise the different qualities of Chinese and Western art. He painted mainly single figures in a sguare format adapted for framing rather than in the traditional Chinese gyre format.
Fu Baoshi (1904-65)
Born Jiangxi province. Educated in China and Japan. He was a calligrapher of notation and too cut seals. Equally a teacher he wrote several books on painting and is regarded every bit one of the last swell literati painters. Mountain Landscape, British Museum and Scholars Suffering from Hardship were both painted during the war years, when he was living in Sichuan province.
Wang Jiqian/ C.C. Wang (b.1907)
Built-in in Jiangsu province. Connoisseur, collector and well-known mural painter who has lived in New York since 1950. He has formed the all-encompassing Bamboo Studio collection, some of which is at present in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine art, New Yotk. Odes of the State of Chen by Ma Hezhi was caused from his collection by the British Museum.
Li Keran (1907-89)
Born Jiangsu province. Born into rural poverty, he painted water buffalo and herd boys in his early on years. His later paintings were generally in blackness ink, an intensely inked surface becoming one of his trade-marks, besides equally an innovative use of securely saturated ink and colour. He was originally a leading exponent of traditional landscape painting, re-establishing the manner within the Communist theoretical framework. In the 1960s he adult his ain landscape style, adapting Western, conventional perspective. See: Landscape in Colours and Landscape Based on Chairman Mao'southward Poem, both in the Drenowatz collection, Rietberg Museum, Zurich, Switzerland.
Lui Shoukun (1919-75)
Born Guangzhou, China, merely emigrated to Hong Kong in 1948. He was a Chan (Zen) Buddhist adherent and painted in many styles including those of the classical by. He was influenced by Western art, including Cubism, and had a number of followers such as Irene Chou (built-in 1924).
Wu Guanzhong (b.1919)
Born Jiangsu province. Studied figurative oil painting in Red china and then in Paris from 1947 to 1950. On his return to Red china he took up landscape painting. He sought to find common ground between Chinese and Western techniques, using both line and colour, frequently with descriptive details, to ensure that a Chinese viewer would recognise the bailiwick matter of more abstract works. In 1990 he turned once again to life studies, with a hint of landscape in the setting. The British Museum has a large horizontal format painting, Paradise for Pocket-size Birds.
Liu Guosong (b.1932)
Born Shandong province. An early advocate of anti-traditionalism, aspiring to be a painter in the Western tradition. He attained his maturity in Taiwan and found solutions blending Eastern and Western traditions and incorporating gimmicky subjects such every bit infinite travel. He modelled his work after Matisse and Picasso, and was also influenced by Klee, De Kooning and Rothko. He has sometimes used a special fibroid fibre paper and an ink-laden castor, tearing fibres from the surface later painting to heighten the calligraphic event.
He Huaishuo (b.1941)
Writer, and pupil of Fu Baoshi. Studied painting in Guangzhou. He believes in communicating emotion through his paintings, and in covering the whole picture surface, in contrast to traditional Chinese paintings where a residual of solids and voids is sought.
Famous Gimmicky Chinese Artists
Amid the many talented painters and sculptors from the People's Democracy of China, involved in contemporary fine art, sentry out for the following. See also: Tiptop 200 Contemporary Artists.
Zhang Xiaogang (b.1958)
Number 5 in the 2008 listing of the Earth'due south Tiptop gimmicky artists, Zhang Xiaogang is noted for his surrealist paintings, influenced by Salvador Dali, as well every bit his Bloodline series of paintings, featuring formal monochrome portraits of Chinese subjects. In 2006, a 1993 painting by Zhang Xiaogang featuring blank-faced family unit members from the mid-1960s was sold for $2.3 million.
Zeng Fanzhi (b.1964)
Number 6 in the list of the Earth'southward Top contemporary artists, Zeng Fanzhi is noted for his figurative works employing a combination of expressionism and realism, besides as his sequence of ironic Great Man paintings, which includes Lenin, Mao, and Karl Marx amongst others.
Yue Minjun (b.1962)
Number vii in the list of the World's Elevation contemporary artists, Yue Minjun is a major member of the Chinese "cynical realist" school - i of the avant-garde contemporary art movements in China - noted for his bizarre and distinctive series of doppelgänger painters.
Wang Guangyi (b.1957)
Number 9 in the listing of the World'south Top contemporary artists, the "political pop" artist Wang Guangyi combines popular consumer logos with the style and aesthetic of communist agitprop propaganda posters.
Liu Xiaodong (b.1963)
From Liaoning. Contemporary fine art painter and photographer. Has generated auction sales (2007-eight) in excess of £x.5 million.
Cai Guo-Qiang (b.1957)
Performance artist specialising in explosive events. Has generated fine art sales (2007-8) in excess of £10 1000000.
Yan Pei-Ming (b.1960)
Shanghai portraitist. Has sold works for more than £9.five million (2007-8).
Chen Yifei (b.1946)
Gimmicky Chinese painter from Zhejing, responsible for art sales at auction of over £9.5 one thousand thousand (2007-8).
Fang Lijun (b.1963)
Contemporary Chinese painter from Hebei, one of the leading members of the Cynical Realism movement. Has sold paintings worth more than £9 million (2007-eight).
Liu Ye (b.1964)
Advanced Chinese creative person, responsible for art sales at auction of over £8.v 1000000 (2007-viii).
Zhou Chunya (b.1955)
Sichuan Portrait painter. Has sold works worth more than £8 meg (2007-8).
Annotation: The British Museum has an agile conquering policy in collecting modern art by Chinese artists, aiming eventually to assemble a collection representative of all the major twentieth-century painting movements in the People'south Republic of Communist china, Taiwan and elsewhere. Apart from the paintings mentioned in a higher place, the British Museum too has works by these 20th-century artists: Jia Youfu, Nie Ou, Wu Changshi, Xiong Hai, Yang Yan-ping and Zhu Xiuli from the People'due south Democracy of China, and Jiang Zhaoshen and Yu Peng from Taiwan.
Acknowledgements:
We gratefully acknowledge the utilize of appendix material from The British Museum Book of Chinese Fine art (2007) edited past Jessica Rawson (British Museum Press): an absolutely essential work of scholarly reference for whatsoever student of painting, sculpture, ceramic pottery, calligraphy and decorative art from ancient China. Nosotros strongly recommend information technology.
• For more than nearly landscape painters and other artists in China, run across: Homepage.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EAST ASIAN ART
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