Li Cheng (painter)

Li Cheng
A Solitary Temple Amid Clearing Peaks 晴峦萧寺. Ink and light color on silk. 111.76 × 55.88 cm. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
Born	919
Died	967
Nationality	Chinese
Known for	Painting
Movement	Northern Landscape style

In this Chinese name, the family name is Li.

Li Cheng (Chinese: 李成; pinyin: Lǐ Chéng; Wade–Giles: Li Ch'eng; 919–967), Courtesy name Xiánxī (咸熙), was a Chinese painter of the Song dynasty. He was influenced by Jing Hao, Juran.

Life

He is from Qingzhou (now part of Weifang, Shandong) during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms and early Song Dynasty. His ancestral lineage was with the Tang Dynasty imperial family, the Li (李) family, which had fallen out of power in 907 with the collapse of the Tang Empire.

Li Cheng learned painting style from Jing Hao and Guan Tong at first but turned to focus on nature and developing his own style. He was also good at poetry and articles; but he did not pay much attention to that. He was not interested in working for the government. Many nobles wanted Li Cheng to work for them, but Li Cheng never accepted. An official named Sun Anzhi, who always wanted to get a painting from Li Cheng, offered Li a job in exchange for his painting. However, Li Cheng refused the offer. Sun then paid money to someone who knew Li Cheng and helped him to steal a painting. Sometime later, Li Cheng saw his work hanging on Sun's wall; he was very angry and never spoke to the person who stole his painting again. During his later years, he traveled around and died in Huaiyang County.

Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, and Guan Tong together became known as the "three great rival artists". He did many landscape paintings with diluted ink, known as "treating ink like gold", which gives the appearance of being in a foggy dream. At that time, he was considered the best landscape painter of all time. He was known to have carried on an artistic dialogue with Wu Daoxuan through their respective paintings. Li Cheng primarily portrayed Shandong area landscapes in his paintings. Artists of later generations, such as Guo Xi, modeled their teaching on his painting style and methods.

His works include “Jigger", "Joy in Fishing", "Cold crow", and "Landscape". One extant painting, "Reading Stele Nest Stone", was a collaboration with Wang Xiao.

Art

Luxuriant Forest among Distant Peaks, detail, Liaoning Provincial Museum.

See also

• Culture of the Song Dynasty
• Chinese painting
• Chinese art
• History of Chinese art

References

Reading

• Sullivan, Michael. The Arts of China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008
• Chinese painting - Five Dynasties (907-960) and Ten Kingdoms (902-978)
• 宣和画谱 - Chinese Text Project

External links

• Landscapes Clear and Radiant: The Art of Wang Hui (1632-1717), an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Li Cheng (see index)
• http://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=668529&searchu=李成&remap=g