Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Wu Daozi
Tang painter of Buddhist and Daoist figures whom Emperor Xuanzong made a court painter, credited with over three hundred temple murals in Chang'an and Luoyang
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 Wu Daoxuan · Hua Sheng
Wu Daozi came from Yangdi, in present-day Yuzhou, Henan; orphaned and poor, he studied calligraphy with Zhang Xu and He Zhizhang before turning to painting. He briefly served as sheriff of Xiaqiu county in Yanzhou, then left office to paint in Luoyang. Emperor Xuanzong summoned him to court as a palace instructor, renamed him Daoxuan, and forbade him to paint except by imperial order. Zhang Yanyuan's *Record of Famous Painters of All Dynasties* (*Lidai minghua ji*) credits him with murals in more than three hundred bays of temples in Chang'an and Luoyang, mostly Buddhist and Daoist figures. Zhu Jingxuan relates that after touring the Jialing River he painted three hundred li of its scenery on a wall of the Datong Hall in a single day. The Northern Song critic Guo Ruoxu contrasted his wind-blown sashes with Cao Zhongda's clinging robes, and the scroll known as *The Heavenly King Presenting a Son* survives only in a Song copy.
Life and times
Dates c. 680 CE–c. 760 CE