Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Mou Yi
Southern Song figure painter from Sichuan who painted the handscroll Pounding Cloth for his friend Dong Geng in 1240
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 Mou Yi of Shu
Mou Yi came from Shu, today's Sichuan, and was a Southern Song figure painter who also studied ancient script and texts. In 1240 he illustrated the poem Pounding Cloth by the Southern Dynasties poet Xie Huilian and gave the handscroll to his friend, the calligrapher Dong Geng. The scroll, more than four and a half metres long, shows thirty-two women in five scenes, from dressing and carrying silk to pounding, sewing and sealing the clothes for sending, and it is now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The Qianlong Emperor inscribed it three times. The same museum holds his album leaf Cricket on a Grassy Slope.
Life and times
Dates 1178-after 1242