Artists › Painters and Calligraphers
Chen Rong
Southern Song official and painter from Fujian famed for ink dragons, best known for the Nine Dragons handscroll of 1244
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 Gongchu · Hao Suoweng
Chen Rong, courtesy name Gongchu and sobriquet Suoweng, came from Changle in Fujian (some say Futang). He passed the jinshi examination under Emperor Lizong, served as magistrate of Pingyang and registrar of the Directorate of Education, governed Putian and reached the rank of grand master for closing court. A poet and calligrapher, he was above all a painter of dragons in ink, splashing ink for clouds and spraying water for mist so that his dragons appear and vanish among them. His Nine Dragons handscroll of 1244 is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a Five Dragons scroll is in the Tokyo National Museum.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; active mid-13th century; painted Nine Dragons in 1244