Writers › Writer / Poet
Zhang Xian
Northern Song lyric poet from Huzhou, nicknamed Zhang of the Three Shadows, who painted the Ten Songs scroll at eighty-two
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Ziye · Zhang of the Three Shadows
Zhang Xian, courtesy name Ziye, came from Wucheng in Huzhou and passed the jinshi examination in 1030. He served as magistrate of Wujiang and Anlu among other posts and retired as a director in the Ministry of Personnel, spending his old age between Hangzhou and Huzhou and exchanging verse with Su Shi and others. He wrote both short and long lyrics and was nicknamed Zhang of the Three Shadows for his fondness for the word 'shadow'. In 1072, at eighty-two, he painted the Ten Songs handscroll from poems by his late father Zhang Wei; it is now in the Palace Museum. He died in 1078 at eighty-nine.
Life and times
Dates 990 CE–1078 CE