Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Fan Kuan
Early Northern Song landscape painter from Huayuan who lived among the Zhongnan and Hua mountains; Travelers among Mountains and Streams bears his name hidden in its foliage
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 Zhongli · Also named Zhongzheng
Fan Kuan, also named Zhongzheng and with the courtesy name Zhongli, came from Huayuan near Chang'an, in today's Yaozhou district of Tongchuan, Shaanxi. The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings describes him as austere in manner, fond of wine and of Daoism, and moving between the two capitals. He first followed Li Cheng and Jing Hao, then turned to nature itself, settling among the cliffs of the Zhongnan and Hua mountains to study their peaks and mists. Guo Ruoxu's Record of Paintings Seen and Heard says he was still alive in the Tiansheng era and ranks him with Li Cheng and Guan Tong. In 1958 Li Lincan found the characters Fan Kuan among the trees at the lower right of Travelers among Mountains and Streams in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, which scholars accept as his work.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the early Northern Song and still alive in the Tiansheng era (1023-1032)