The greatest calligraphy in Chinese history was stolen by a trick, and painters could not resist the scene. Xiao Yi and the Orchid Pavilion Manuscript depi…
Xiao Yi and the Orchid Pavilion Manuscript (萧翼赚兰亭图卷) Read More »
Liang Kai could draw a crowd in ten strokes, and the tradition calls that a virtue. His attributed scroll Wang Xizhi Writing on a Fan shows the reduced bru…
Wang Xizhi Writing on a Fan (梁楷（传）右军书扇图卷) Read More »
Zhang Xian was a poet first and a painter second, which is precisely why his scroll Ten Odes is interesting. It illustrates poetry with the restraint of a…
Most Song painting looks up at mountains or studies flowers. Wang Juzheng looked down at a woman at work and made the ordinary feel monumental.
The Spinning Wheel (王居正纺车图卷) Read More »
Ruan Gao left almost no biography and one extraordinary picture. His handscroll Immortal Ladies of the Penglai Court is a rare survival of Daoist figure pa…
Immortal Ladies of the Penglai Court (阮郜阆苑女仙图卷) Read More »
Zhou Wenju painted the men who ran a fallen court, caught between poetry and anxiety. His scroll Literary Gathering shows scholars at their favourite activ…
Literary Gathering (周文矩文苑图卷) Read More »
Most surviving Tang and Five Dynasties figure painting shows courtiers. Hu Gui pointed his brush the other way, at the nomads on the steppe, and gave them…
Nomads at Rest (胡瓌卓歇图卷) Read More »
Yang Wujiu took one flower and four states of it and made a whole argument about restraint. His handscroll Four Plum Blossoms is the ink plum painting at i…
Four Plum Blossoms (扬无咎四梅花图卷) Read More »
The most gifted artist to sit on a Chinese throne also lost the most. Emperor Huizong painted Auspicious Dragon Rock, and the rock he admired outlived his…
Auspicious Dragon Rock (赵佶祥龙石图卷) Read More »
Guo Xi wrote the book on landscape and then painted the proof. His hanging scroll Tree, Rocks and Distant Mountains is a single calm statement of a theory…
Tree, Rocks and Distant Mountains (郭熙窠石平远图轴) Read More »
