Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Zhu Yunming
Suzhou calligrapher and writer, grandson of Xu Youzhen, who failed the metropolitan examination repeatedly and was best known for his wild cursive script
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 Xizhe · Hao Zhishan
Zhu Yunming, courtesy name Xizhe, came from Changzhou county in Suzhou; because he was born with six fingers on his right hand he called himself Zhishan, Branching Mountain. His grandfather Zhu Hao had been a jinshi of 1439, and his maternal grandfather was the powerful minister Xu Youzhen. He could write characters a foot high at five and compose poems at nine, passed the provincial examination in 1492, but failed the metropolitan examination again and again; he was eventually made magistrate of Xingning in Guangdong, where he hunted down more than thirty bandit chiefs, and then assistant prefect of Yingtian, before pleading illness and going home. His calligraphy drew on many models and was most admired in wild cursive, and with Tang Yin, Wen Zhengming and Xu Zhenqing he made up the Four Talents of Wu. Fond of drink and careless with money, he gave away his fees as fast as they came, and in old age creditors followed him through the streets. His collected writings are the Huaixingtang ji.
Life and times
Dates 1461 CE–1527 CE