Ni Zan

Also known as Zi Yuanzhen · Hao Yunlin

Ni Zan, courtesy name Yuanzhen, styled Yunlinzi, came from a rich family in Wuxi and built the Qingbi Pavilion to hold his bronzes, calligraphy and paintings; he was famous for his obsession with cleanliness, forever washing his hands. Early in the Zhizheng reign, while the country was still at peace, he gave his property away to relatives and friends, and for many years afterwards he lived on a small boat around Lake Tai; when Zhang Shixin, brother of the warlord Zhang Shicheng, sent silk to buy a painting he turned it away. His landscapes of the lake shore set a few rocks and sparse trees in the foreground, an empty stretch of water in the middle and low hills beyond, in dry, pale ink, as in the Rongxi Studio and Six Gentlemen. He died in 1374 at seventy-three. The Ming History gives him a biography among the recluses, and it records that families in the Jiangnan region judged one another's taste by whether they owned his paintings.