Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Qi Xu
Early Northern Song painter from Jiangnan, noted for bamboo, birds and water buffalo, to whom the handscroll Herding Cattle by Rivers and Hills is attributed
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 Also written Qi Yu
Qi Xu was a painter from Jiangnan in the early Northern Song. Guo Ruoxu's Experiences in Painting lists him among the bird-and-flower painters, saying he painted bamboo, flowers and birds and was also good at water buffalo, with a lofty air. Almost nothing else is recorded of his life. Herding Cattle by Rivers and Hills, a coloured handscroll on silk in the Palace Museum, Beijing, showing herd boys and buffalo among riverside hills and farmhouses, has traditionally been attributed to him and is an important Song painting of the herding theme.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; lived in the early Northern Song