Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Gu Kaizhi
Eastern Jin figure painter and theorist who said a portrait's spirit lies in the eyes; works attributed to him survive only in later copies
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 Zhangkang · Gu Hutou
Gu Kaizhi, courtesy name Changkang, childhood name Hutou, came from Wuxi in Jinling. Learned and witty, he served on the staffs of Huan Wen and Yin Zhongkan, rising to cavalier attendant-in-ordinary early in the Yixi era. People said he had three supreme gifts: talent, painting and foolishness. He would leave the eyes of a portrait unpainted for years, saying the spirit lay in them, and when painting Pei Kai he added three hairs to the cheek to bring out his character; Xie An declared nothing like his painting had existed since the birth of humankind. His essays on painting, among them the one where he speaks of conveying spirit through form, survive because Zhang Yanyuan copied them into his Tang Lidai minghua ji. His official biography says he died in office at sixty-one, and the Admonitions scroll and the Nymph of the Luo River scroll credited to him are later copies, now in the British Museum and the Palace Museum in Beijing.
Life and times
Dates c. 344 CE–c. 405 CE