Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Huang Gongwang
Yuan painter and Quanzhen Daoist from Changshu whose long handscroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains now survives in two pieces, in Hangzhou and Taipei
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 Zijiu · Hao Dachi
Huang Gongwang, courtesy name Zijiu, styled Yifeng and Dachi Daoren, was born Lu Jian in Changshu and took the surname Huang when he was adopted as a boy by a family from Yongjia. He worked as a clerk in the Zhexi surveillance office and was jailed in 1315 when his superior Zhang Lu fell from office. After his release he joined the Quanzhen Daoist order and moved between Songjiang, Hangzhou and the Fuchun River, living by fortune-telling and painting. In 1347 he began a long handscroll, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, for a fellow Daoist known as Wuyong, and when he inscribed it in 1350 it was still not quite finished; he also wrote a short manual, Secrets of Landscape Painting (Xie shanshui jue). He died in 1354 at eighty-five. The scroll was partly burned in the early Qing; its first section is in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum and the rest in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, and Dong Qichang listed him first among the Four Yuan Masters.
Life and times
Dates 1269 CE–1354 CE