Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Zhu Da
Painter of the early Qing, a descendant of the Ming prince Zhu Quan who became a monk after 1644 and signed his ink paintings of fish, birds and lotus as Bada Shanren
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 Hao Ba Da Shan Ren · Xue Ge · Ren Wu
Zhu Da was a descendant of Zhu Quan, the Ming Prince of Ning, born in 1626 into the imperial clan at Nanchang. After the fall of the Ming he took the tonsure in 1648 under the Buddhist name Chuanqi and used such names as Xuege, Geshan and Renwu. Shao Changheng's biography of him says that during the Kangxi reign he stayed as a guest of Hu Yitang, magistrate of Linchuan, then suddenly went mad, tore up and burned his robes and walked back alone to Nanchang. From about 1684 he signed his work Bada Shanren, the four characters written so that they resemble the words for weeping or laughing at it. His paintings reduce fish, birds, lotus and rocks to a few strokes, and his fish and birds often glare with the whites of their eyes; surviving works include the Lotus by the River scroll and the Anwan album. He died in 1705. He is grouped with Shitao, Hongren and Kuncan as the Four Monk Painters of the early Qing.
Life and times
Dates 1626 CE–1705 CE