Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Zhu Derun
Yuan landscape painter and poet of Kunshan, recommended to court by Zhao Mengfu, who withdrew south after Emperor Yingzong's murder
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 Zemin
Zhu Derun, courtesy name Zemin, styled the Hermit of Suiyang after his family's home in present-day Shangqiu, Henan, lived at Kunshan near Suzhou. Known young for his poems and paintings, he went to the capital on Zhao Mengfu's recommendation, was received by Emperor Yingzong, and was appointed a Hanlin drafter and deputy superintendent of Confucian schools for the Zhengdong branch secretariat. When Yingzong was murdered in 1323 he resigned and went home, spending nearly thirty years in retirement around Suzhou. In the last years of the Yuan he was briefly recalled as a clerk of the Jiang-Zhe provincial government before returning home again. His landscapes follow Li Cheng and Guo Xi; among those that survive are the Xiuye Pavilion, painted in 1364 and now in the Palace Museum in Beijing, and Playing the Qin under Trees. His prose and verse were collected as the Cunfuzhai wenji.
Life and times
Dates 1294 CE–1365 CE