Huang Gongwang

Huang Gongwang was born Lu Jian in Changshu and later adopted into the Huang family. After a minor official career under the Mongol Yuan dynasty ended in prison, he turned to Daoism and painting, becoming the eldest of the Four Masters of the Yuan. He built mountains from dry, layered brushstrokes and pale ink washes, in the scholar's manner rather than the court academy's. His handscroll Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, painted around the age of eighty, became a model for centuries of Chinese landscape painters.