Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Sun Guoting
Early Tang calligrapher and minor official whose Treatise on Calligraphy of 687 survives in his own cursive hand
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 Qianli
Sun Guoting, courtesy name Qianli (or, by another account, personal name Qianli and courtesy name Guoting), called himself a man of Wu commandery, though other accounts place him in Fuyang or Chenliu. Neither Tang history gives him a biography; Chen Zi'ang wrote his epitaph and a funeral address, describing a studious man whose career went nowhere, a recorder in the heir apparent's guard who fell ill and died at a lodging in Luoyang. He wrote cursive script after Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi, and in 687 he set down his Treatise on Calligraphy in that script, a discussion of the history and technique of the art. The original manuscript is in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and engraved versions have circulated since the Song.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; wrote the Treatise on Calligraphy in 687