Zhang Lu

Also known as Zi Tianchi · Hao Pingshan

Zhang Lu, courtesy name Tianchi, styled Pingshan, came from Xiangfu, the city of Kaifeng, and was active in the middle Ming. He studied at the National University as a government student but gave up an official career to live by painting. His figure painting follows Wu Wei in its free, sweeping brushwork, and he also painted landscapes; he belongs to the later phase of the Zhe school and was well known in the north. The National Palace Museum in Taipei holds his Laozi Riding an Ox, showing the sage leaving through the pass, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art also has works by him. In the late Ming, He Liangjun's notebook Siyouzhai congshuo named Zhang Pingshan of the north among the Zhe school painters whose work he dismissed as crude.