Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Zheng Sixiao
Song loyalist poet and painter from Lianjiang who lived out the Yuan in Suzhou without office and painted orchids with no soil beneath their roots
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 Yiweng · Hao Suonan · Hao Sanwai Yeren
Zheng Sixiao, courtesy name Yiweng and sobriquet Suonan, came from Lianjiang in Fujian and was a senior student at the Song Imperial Academy. When the Song fell he took the name Sixiao, read as 'longing for the Zhao', always sat facing south and lived in seclusion in Suzhou, never serving the Yuan. He painted sparse ink orchids without soil or roots, a sign of the lost homeland; his Ink Orchid handscroll of 1306 is in the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. The Xinshi, a collection bearing his name, was found in a well at the Chengtian Temple in Suzhou in the late Ming. He died in 1318.
Life and times
Dates 1241–1318