Xia Gui (active early 13th century) (pronounced ‘sha gway’) was one of the ‘four artists of the Southern Song’ (南宋四家).
His almost minimalist, evocative paintings exemplify Southern Song painting styles.
Long after Xia and – the Song dynasty – had disappeared, his paintings and style lived on in China, Japan, Korea and beyond.
Biography
Xia Gui (夏珪 [Xià Guī]), courtesy name Yuyu, was born at some point in the early 13th century in the Southern Song capital of Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province).
Not many details of his life are known. He likely trained to be an artist from a young age, which was a common route to the government-run Academy of Painting.
Most of his career appears to have taken place during the Emperor Ningzong’s reign (1194 – 1224 AD). During this time, he reached the highest rank in the Academy.
Xia Gui’s painting
Context: The Southern Song’s Academy & landscapes
Three main types of painters existed during the Southern Song:
Academy painters
Professional painters working for the court for commission.
Many of these were trained in painting from a young age and were extremely proficient at the technical aspects of painting.
They were also trained to be able to interpret requests for paintings. For example, artists might be given a topic (‘a tavern in a bamboo grove by a bridge’) or line from a poem.
Literati artists
These were scholar-gentlemen, usually officials. Their work was technically simpler than professional painters but it often had more sophisticated literary or philosophical meaning.
Chan Buddhist painters
These monk painters were similar to literati painters in that they were not professionally trained to carry out commissions for royals or other government officials.
Many of their paintings survived the collapse of the Southern Song dynasty after visiting Japanese Buddhists took them back to Japan.
Xia Gui’s role: Academy painter
As an academy painter, Xia Gui would have been expected to work within set conditions.
One of these was focusing on landscape paintings, which had been the favoured imperial genre of painting since the early Northern Song period.
Painting linages
Early on in the Song dynasty, the landscape paintings of the Five dynasties painter Li Cheng (919 – 967 AD) had been adopted as the ‘official’ imperial style.
Court painters such as Guo Xi (ca. 1001 – 1090) continued on this tradition. Many of Guo’s paintings decorated the most important government offices.
Li Tang (ca. 1066 – 1150 AD), was a highly important Academy painter during the early Southern Song Academy.
Li also worked during the late Northern Song period, and was part of the lineage of Fan Kuan (active ca. 1023 – 1031 AD). Despite some similarities, Fan’s forceful style contrasted sharply with Li’s more elegant approach.
Influenced by Li Tang, Xia Gui worked in part within the Fan lineage. However, he also clearly took inspiration from the earlier work of Li Cheng, too.
However, he also innovated and develop his own distinct style of landscapes. He did this alongside – but separately from – his contemporary: Ma Yuan.
The Ma-Xia school/style
Ma Yuan (active before 1189 – after 1225) was a court painter working at approximately the same time as Xia.
Ma came from a family of court painters going back five generations. He was likely younger than Xia, but appears to have worked at around the same time.
The Southern Song capital (today’s Hangzhou) was then likely the largest and most preposterous city in the world. There were many artists and patrons in the city (and beyond).
However, the Ma-Xia style has since come to epitomise the late southern style of landscape painting.
It carries aspects of the technical achievements of earlier Song landscapes. For example, it often has the foreground, middle, and far off distances.
But also pars down the sheer volume of detail earlier painting had. This creates a more minimalist and ethereal quality. Landscape features appear as ethereal islands surrounded in impenetrable mists or voids.