Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Zhao Shilei
Northern Song imperial clansman and painter of lakeside scenes and water birds, whose Xiangxiang Scenery is in the Palace Museum
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 Imperial clansman Shilei
Zhao Shilei was a member of the Song imperial clan who held the title of surveillance commissioner of Xiangzhou and was known in his day as a painter. The Xuanhe Catalogue of Paintings says he painted geese, ducks, gulls and egrets among streams and sandbanks with a poet's feeling, as well as flowers and bamboo, and lists fifty-one of his works in the imperial collection, among them a Xiangxiang Scenery. The silk handscroll of that title in the Palace Museum, Beijing, with a label in Emperor Huizong's slender-gold script, shows a level waterland of willows and water birds; it passed through Xiang Yuanbian's collection, entered the Qing palace and was remounted after heavy damage in modern times.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active in the late Northern Song, with works in the imperial collection by the Xuanhe era