Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Li Shan
Xinghua painter of birds and flowers who served briefly as a court painter and a county magistrate before living by his brush in Yangzhou
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 Zongyang · Hao Futang
Li Shan, whose name is properly written with the character for the old form of eel, had the courtesy name Zongyang and the sobriquet Futang and came from Xinghua in Jiangsu. He passed the provincial examination in 1711 and three years later was summoned to the palace as a painter, but disliked the court's academic manner and soon left. Early in the Qianlong reign he became magistrate of Teng county in Shandong, lost the post after offending his superiors, and settled in Yangzhou, where he lived by selling paintings. His birds and flowers began from the Ming painter Lin Liang and later took on Shitao's broken brush and splashed ink, often crowded with long inscriptions in uneven calligraphy. A close friend of his fellow townsman Zheng Xie, he is counted among the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, and the Draft History of Qing (Qingshi gao) notes him after Zheng, saying his flowers and birds followed Lin Liang and had a natural charm.
Life and times
Dates 1686 CE–1762 CE