Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Yan Liben
Early Tang court painter who portrayed the meritorious ministers of the Lingyan Pavilion and became Right Chancellor in 668, to whom the Emperor's Sedan Chair scroll is attributed
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 Baron of Boling
Yan Liben came from Wannian in Yongzhou; his father Yan Pi had been known for craftsmanship under the Sui, and his elder brother Yan Lide was likewise a builder and painter. In 643 Emperor Taizong had him paint the twenty-four meritorious ministers, Zhangsun Wuji among them, on the walls of the Lingyan Pavilion. When the emperor once called him to sketch at a palace lake and the summons went out for 'the painter Yan Liben', he knelt by the water mixing colours and afterwards told his son never to take up the art. He later succeeded his brother as Minister of Works and in 668 became Right Chancellor and Baron of Boling, prompting the jibe that the Left Chancellor won fame in the desert while the Right Chancellor won it with paint. He died in 673. The *Emperor's Sedan Chair* (*Bunian tu*) and the *Thirteen Emperors* scroll both carry his name, though most scholars treat them as later copies.
Life and times
Dates c. 600 CE–673 CE