The Four Wangs () were four Chinese

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

painters during the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

in the 17th century, all with the surname

Wang Wang may refer to: Names * Wang (surname) Wang () is the pinyin romanization of Chinese, romanization of the common Chinese surname (''Wáng''). It has a mixture of various origin with uncertain lineage of family history, however it is c ...

. They are best known for their accomplishments in ''

shan shui ''Shan shui'' (; pronounced ) refers to a style of traditional Chinese painting that involves or depicts scenery or natural landscapes, using a brush and ink rather than more conventional paints. Mountains, rivers and waterfalls are comm ...

'' painting.

The painters

They were Wang Shimin (1592–1680), Wang Jian (1598–1677), Wang Hui (1632–1717) and Wang Yuanqi (1642–1715).Cihai: Ci hai bian ji wei yuan hui (辞海编辑委员会）. Ci hai （辞海）. Shanghai: Shanghai ci shu chu ban she （上海辞书出版社）, 1979 Page 757. They were members of the group known as the

Six Masters of the early Qing period The Six Masters of the early Qing period () were a group of major China, Chinese artists who worked in the 17th and early 18th centuries during the Qing dynasty. Also known as orthodox masters, they continued the tradition of the scholar-painter, ...

Philosophy

The Four Wangs represented the so-called "orthodox school" of painting at the time. The school was based on the teachings of

Dong Qichang Dong Qichang (; courtesy name Xuanzai (玄宰); 1555–1636) was a Chinese art theorist, Calligraphy, calligrapher, Painting, painter, and politician of the later period of the Ming dynasty. Life as a scholar and calligrapher Dong Qichang was a ...

(1555–1636). It was “orthodox” in the Confucian sense that it had continuing traditional modes, as they were in contrast to the "Individualist" painters such as Bada Shanren and

Shitao Shitao or Shi Tao (; other department Yuan Ji (), 1642 – 1707), born into the Ming dynasty imperial clan as Zhu Ruoji (朱若極), was a Chinese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and landscape painter during the early Qing dynasty. Born in the ...

References

External links

Four Wangs' Painting Galleries
at China Online Museum {{Qing dynasty topics

Quartets

The painters

Philosophy

See also

References

Further reading

External links