Huang Gongwang

Who was Huang Gongwang?

Huang Gongwang was a painter born during the late Song Dynasty in Changshu, Jiangsu. He was the oldest of the "Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty." Huang was born Lu Jian, and after serving as a government official, he became a Taoist priest. He spent his last years in the Fu-ch'un mountains near Hangzhou devoting himself to Taoism, where around 1350 he completed one of his most famous, and arguably greatest, works, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains.

In art he rejected the landscape conventions of his era's Academy, but is now regarded as one of the great literati painters. He had two styles, one of which depended on the use of purple, while the other required the use of black ink. He was also a poet, as was typical for Chinese scholar-officials of his era, and had some talent for music.

He wrote a treatise on landscape painting, Secrets of Landscape Painting.