Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Mi Fei
Northern Song calligrapher, painter and collector, one of the Four Song Masters, whose Shu Silk Scroll and writings on painting and calligraphy survive
A desk holds an unrolled sheet bearing three bold black ink strokes, with a rack of many brushes above it, a stone ink slab and ink stick, a porcelain bowl, a red lacquer box, a dish of red seal paste and a paperweight; a small seated figure shows through a round window onto bamboo.
Also known as Zi Yuanzhang · Hao Xiang Yang Man Shi · Lumen Jushi · Haiyue Waishi · Mi Nangong
Mi Fu, courtesy name Yuanzhang, came from a family of Taiyuan origin that had moved to Xiangyang, and in later life he settled at Runzhou. Because his mother had attended Empress Gao, he entered office through privilege and served in local posts. In the Chongning era he became an erudite of the schools of calligraphy and painting and then a vice director in the Ministry of Rites, before being sent to govern Huaiyang. He collected old calligraphy and paintings obsessively, bowed in court dress before a strange rock and called it his elder brother, and was so fastidious that people called him Crazy Mi. In 1088 he wrote eight of his own poems on a length of Sichuan silk, the *Shu Silk Scroll* now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and his *History of Calligraphy* (*Shushi*) and *History of Painting* (*Huashi*) record the works he saw. He died at Huaiyang in 1107 at fifty-seven, and his son Mi Youren carried on his misty ink-dot landscapes.
Life and times
Dates 1051 CE–1107 CE