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Wu Yuanzhi
Jin dynasty scholar-painter of the Mingchang era whose Red Cliff handscroll is one of the earliest surviving paintings of the subject
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 Shanfu
Wu Yuanzhi, courtesy name Shanfu, lived under the Jin dynasty; the Yuan writer Xia Wenyan's Precious Mirror of Painting calls him a well-known scholar of the Mingchang era who excelled at landscape. Little else is recorded of his life. The Red Cliff handscroll in the National Palace Museum, Taipei, shows Su Shi and his friends in a boat beneath a towering cliff in rushing water, painted with vigorous brushwork. Long ascribed to the Northern Song painter Zhu Rui, it was reassigned to Wu Yuanzhi on the strength of the colophon by the Jin scholar Zhao Bingwen that follows it, and it is regarded as one of the earliest surviving Red Cliff paintings.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Mingchang era of the Jin emperor Zhangzong (1190–1196)