Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Wu Zhen
Yuan painter from Weitang in Jiaxing who never held office, painted fishermen on misty rivers and ink bamboo, and is counted among the Four Yuan Masters
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 Zhonggui · Hao Mei Hua Dao Ren
Wu Zhen, courtesy name Zhonggui, called himself the Plum Blossom Daoist and also the Plum Blossom Monk; he came from Weitang in Jiaxing, present-day Jiashan in Zhejiang. He never took office and lived quietly in his home district, reportedly earning his keep by telling fortunes, and the plum trees around his house gave him his sobriquet. His landscapes follow the tenth-century masters Dong Yuan and Juran in wet ink and hemp-fibre strokes, often with a lone fisherman on a river, as in his Fishermen scrolls and Twin Junipers; he also painted ink bamboo, and an album of his bamboo studies is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. He died in 1354, having already inscribed his own tombstone as the stupa of the Plum Blossom Monk, and his grave still stands in Jiashan. In the late Ming, Dong Qichang grouped him with Huang Gongwang, Ni Zan and Wang Meng as the Four Yuan Masters.
Life and times
Dates 1280 CE–1354 CE