Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Wei Jiuding
Late Yuan painter from Tiantai who learned ruled-line painting from Wang Zhenpeng; his Nymph of the Luo River bears a poem by Ni Zan
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 Mingxuan
Wei Jiuding, courtesy name Mingxuan, came from Tiantai in Zhejiang and was active at the end of the Yuan. He specialised in ruled-line painting, which he learned from Wang Zhenpeng, and also painted landscapes and figures. His only known surviving work, The Nymph of the Luo River, a hanging scroll in ink on paper now in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, takes up Cao Zhi's rhapsody but shows the goddess alone, turning as she glides over the water against pale distant hills. Ni Zan inscribed a poem on it in a wushen year, usually taken as 1368, praising Wei as the finest painter of the subject, which shows his place among the Jiangnan literati.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the late Yuan, with a colophon by Ni Zan of c. 1368