Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Shen Zhou
Suzhou painter who never sat the examinations or took office, whose landscapes and pupils, Wen Zhengming among them, shaped what came to be called the Wu school
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 Qinan · Hao Shitian
Shen Zhou, courtesy name Qinan, styled Shitian and later the White Stone Old Man, came from Changzhou county in Suzhou, from a family of poets and painters who had shunned office for generations. When the prefect wanted to recommend him for office he consulted the Book of Changes, drew the hexagram for withdrawal, and decided to stay a recluse; later governors who invited him onto their staffs were refused for his mother's sake. Once a prefect drafted painters to decorate the walls of his offices and Shen's name was put on the list; rather than ask a powerful friend to excuse him, he called it his duty and went. His early landscapes are fine and careful, his later ones broad and loose; Lofty Mount Lu, painted in 1467 for his teacher Chen Kuan's seventieth birthday, is in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. He died in 1509. The Ming History reports that critics ranked his painting first of the dynasty, and Wen Zhengming learned to paint from him.
Life and times
Dates 1427 CE–1509 CE