Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Xu Yang
Suzhou painter who presented his work to the Qianlong emperor on the 1751 southern tour and became a court painter, author of Prosperous Suzhou and the Southern Inspection Tour scrolls
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 Yunting
Xu Yang, courtesy name Yunting, came from a family long settled in Zhuanzhu Lane inside the Chang Gate of Suzhou. When the Qianlong emperor made his first southern tour in 1751, Xu presented paintings that pleased him and was called to serve in the palace painting workshop, the Ruyi Guan; he was later granted juren status by imperial favour and made a secretary of the Grand Secretariat. In 1759 he finished the long handscroll Prosperous Suzhou (also called Burgeoning Life in a Resplendent Age), a panorama of the city and its suburbs now in the Liaoning Provincial Museum, and in 1770 he completed the twelve scrolls of the Qianlong Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour, now dispersed, with scroll six in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His birth and death years are unknown.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active 1751 to after 1776