Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Chen Hongshou
Late Ming painter from Zhuji whose archaic, exaggerated figures, including the woodblock Water Margin playing cards, made him the southern half of the pair Chen of the South, Cui of the North
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 Zhanghou · Hao Laolian · Hao Huichi
Chen Hongshou, courtesy name Zhanghou, known as Laolian, came from Zhuji in Zhejiang; as a youth he studied with the philosopher Liu Zongzhou and learned painting from Lan Ying. In the Chongzhen years he went to Beijing as a student of the Imperial Academy and was set to copying portraits of past emperors, which let him study the palace collection, before he went home. After the Ming fell he spent about a year as a monk at Yunmen Temple near Shaoxing under the name Huichi, then lived by selling paintings in Hangzhou and Shaoxing. His figures, drawn with round, wiry lines and deliberately odd proportions, reached a wide public through woodblock prints such as the Water Margin and Antiquities playing cards and his illustrations to the Romance of the Western Chamber; scrolls include Pine and Immortal Longevity and the album Sixteen Views of a Recluse. He was paired with Cui Zizhong as Chen of the South, Cui of the North.
Life and times
Dates 1599 CE–1652 CE