Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Li Cheng
Landscape painter of the Five Dynasties and early Song, settled at Yingqiu, whose wintry forests and level distances shaped Northern Song landscape
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 Xianxi · Li Yingqiu
Li Cheng, courtesy name Xianxi, descended from the Tang imperial house; his grandfather Li Ding, prefect of Suzhou late in the Tang, moved the family to Qingzhou to escape the disorders, hence the later name Li Yingqiu. He loved wine and poetry, played the qin and go, and above all painted landscapes, his level vistas of wintry forest ranking with Guan Tong and Fan Kuan, but he never gained office. According to the Song History, in the Qiande years he moved his household to Chenzhou at the invitation of its prefect Wei Rong and drank himself to death at an inn. The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings notes that his descendants bought back and destroyed his paintings, so genuine works were already rare in the Northern Song. Attributed works include Reading a Stele by Pitted Rocks, painted with Wang Xiao (Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts), and Buddhist Temple amid Clearing Peaks (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art).
Life and times
Dates 919–c. 967