Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Xue Shaopeng
Northern Song calligrapher, son of the finance minister Xue Xiang, who modelled his running script on the Two Wangs and was paired with Mi Fu
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 Daozu · Hao Cuiwei Jushi
Xue Shaopeng, courtesy name Daozu, styled Cuiwei Jushi, came from Wanquan, today's Wanrong in Shanxi, and was the son of the statesman Xue Xiang; he rose to compiler in the imperial library. His running and cursive script followed Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi and his regular script followed Zhong Yao. He was a friend of Mi Fu, and contemporaries spoke of the two together as Mi and Xue. The Yuan scholar Yu Ji held that only Mi Fu, Xue Shaopeng and Huang Bosi truly understood the ancient methods, and judged Xue the purest of the three. His surviving autographs include the Miscellaneous Writings scroll and the Danian letter in the Palace Museum in Beijing.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active late Northern Song