Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Jia Shigu
Southern Song academy painter from Kaifeng who drew Buddhist and Daoist figures in plain line after Li Gonglin
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 Shigu
Jia Shigu came from Bian, today's Kaifeng, and served as an attendant in the Southern Song painting academy during the Shaoxing era. He painted Buddhist and Daoist figures and followed Li Gonglin's plain ink-line drawing, catching its relaxed air. According to Xia Wenyan's Precious Mirror of Painting, the later academy painter Liang Kai studied with him. The leaf Ancient Temple at a Mountain Pass in the album Collected Treasures of Famous Paintings, in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, carries his signature. A Guanyin signed Shigu in the same museum is treated by modern scholars as attributed to him.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the Shaoxing era (1131-1162)