Huang Gongwang

Huáng Gōngwàng was a painter from Jiangsu. He is the oldest of the "four great masters of the ." After serving as an official he acted as a Taoist priest. He spent his last years in the Fu-ch'un mountains near Hangzhou devoting himself to Taoism.

In art he rejected the landscape conventions of his era's Academy, but is regarded as one of the great literati painters. He had two styles. One was dependent on the use of purple and the other preferred black ink. Like all other Chinese scholar-officials of his era he was also a poet. Lastly he had some talent for music.