Xia Gui

Chinese painter

• Born: c. 1180
• Birthplace: Qiantang (now Hangzhou), Zhejiang Province, China
• Died: 1230
• Place of death: Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

Together with Ma Yuan, Xia Gui formed the Ma-Xia school of painting, which was extremely influential in the subsequent development of landscape painting in China and Japan.

Early Life

Known as the younger contemporary of painter Ma Yuan (c. 1165-c. 1225), Xia Gui (sheeah gwee) served the Southern Song emperors Ningzong (Ning-tsung; r. 1195-1224) and Lizong (Li-tsung; r. 1225-1264). Little information exists about Xia Gui’s life. It is known that, like Ma Yuan, Xia received the Golden Girdle honor from the court and was artist-in-attendance at the imperial palace in Hangzhou. Unlike Ma, however, who came from northwestern China, Xia was apparently born very close to the capital, and Chinese art critics intimate that Xia received imperial honors earlier in his life than did Ma.

Hangzhou had become the capital in 1126, when an alliance between the Chinese of the Northern Song (Sung; 960-1127) and the Tungusic Jurchen turned sour, and North China fell to the Jurchen. The Northern Song rulers fled to the Yangtze and settled into what was, at the time, an unimposing provincial capital situated at the mouth of the Zhe estuary. The imperial court apparently chose the town in part because it was easier to defend against “barbarians” but also because of the beauty of its location. Hangzhou is surrounded by scenic hills and lies just east of what is perhaps China’s most attractive lake, Hu.

In keeping with the generally favorable climate for commerce that characterized the Northern Song period, trade continued to flourish during the Southern Song era (1127-1279). As a consequence, Hangzhou grew into a bustling trade center and by the middle of the thirteenth century had a population of more than half a million people. It also became what many consider to be China’s most beautiful city, with scenic canals winding through the town. The wealthy led luxurious lives, living in multistoried villas replete with servants, gardens, and amenities brought to China from all over the globe. Scholars, poets, and painters lived near or within the court, and the favored professionals led fairly comfortable lives, with fancy titles and imperial stipends. Undoubtedly, Xia was one of the favorite artists of the Southern Song court, and like Ma Yuan, he chose subject matter that reflected his lifestyle and that of his patrons. Many of his paintings are found on fans, album leaves, and silk scrolls. Like Ma Yuan, Xia used ink and slight traces of color on silk. He often depicted night scenes of China’s elite enjoying the scenic splendors of Hangzhou or diverting themselves with pleasant pastimes.

This idyllic situation was, however, somewhat deceiving, as the Chinese during the Southern Song chafed at the fact that North China was in barbarian hands. After 1234, the situation grew progressively worse, as the Jurchen Dynasty, known as the Jin, succumbed to the Mongol successors of Genghis Khan. From 1234 on, as the Mongol Empire continued to expand, the threat to the Southern Song was never really far from the minds of China’s literati, and Hangzhou exhibited an almost fin de siècle atmosphere. Xia’s paintings, perhaps even more than those of Ma Yuan, reflected a sense of impending change. Whereas Ma was a northerner who had moved to the imperial court in the south and was therefore strictly a courtier, Xia was a native of Zhejiang Province, presumably with a less sophisticated background.

Life’s Work

Although less is known about Xia Gui than about Ma Yuan (and fewer of Xia’s paintings are extant), in many ways, Xia revealed more of himself through his art than did Ma. In fact, Xia went beyond Ma in exploring new avenues of self-expression. Like Ma, Xia used the ax-stroke technique of painting mountains, generally attributed to the great Northern Song painter Li Tang (Li T’ang). This technique has been likened to hacking out the angular features and crevices of the rocks with the side of a brush. Xia also adopted Ma’s tendency to emphasize one corner of his painting, though not nearly to the degree that Ma did.

Xia’s paintings tend to be much simpler and yet more emotional than those of Ma. Whereas Ma tended to be elegant and subdued, Xia exhibited what one could almost call humility in his work. Perhaps Xia was deferring to Ma’s age; perhaps the difference in style merely reflects Xia’s humbler background. It is equally possible, however, that Xia Gui held different Daoist beliefs and avoided the occasional vanities that appear in Ma Yuan’s paintings. As scholar Max Loehr has pointed out, in Xia Gui’s paintings,

the dramatically bent and twisted pines of the Ma school are replaced by less conspicuous types of deciduous trees; . . . Ma’s architecture gives way to rustic abodes. . . . Even Hsia’s figures appear to be humbler folk than Ma’s aristocratic types.

Chinese critics have suggested that Xia was clearly more expressive than Ma and that the former’s paintings had a greater sense of urgency and passion. Moreover, it appears that Xia was less interested in humans than in nature, and, like nature, Xia could exhibit changing moods, even within one work.

In some of Xia’s works, for example, one may find a soft setting of mountains bathed in an evening mist, while a lone fisherman’s boat drifts gently in a quiet stream. As with Ma, the empty spaces become as important as the painted areas, for the viewer is expected to determine, using his own imagination, whether these are clouds, rain, or a mystical Daoist-Chan void. In such paintings, there is economy without affectation, subtlety without mannerism, and a sense of peace. In other works, Xia seems anxious to show flux and movement by suggesting ominous possibilities. Here, there is distortion, asymmetry, and passionate uncertainty. Trees are larger than they should be, the rocks seem ready to fall, mountains vie with one another, and the water is turbulent and uninviting. These works are a reminder that fall and winter, in providing the eternal changes of life, do not always do so in a gentle fashion. In keeping with this genuinely Daoist understanding of nature’s vagaries, there are some works by Xia that suggest transitional stages, in which serenity lies juxtaposed to passion. Always, however, as yin is to yang, one is in ascendancy while the other is subordinated and therefore lies in the background.

As with Ma, Chinese explanations of Xia’s motifs range from the poetical-philosophical to the dreary political. Again, Xia may have been reacting to the circumstances north of the Southern Song Empire. If this was so, however, it is far less pronounced than in Ma’s works. It may be that Xia felt less compelled to reflect the court’s political sentiments in his paintings than did Ma. Xia’s family did, however, enjoy imperial patronage, and at least one of his sons, Xia Sen, was also a court painter. Only a few of Xia Sen’s paintings have survived, and little is known about him.

In the United States, works attributed to Xia Gui can be found in the Boston Museum of Fine Art, the Freer Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and galleries in Cleveland, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and San Francisco. Unfortunately, some of these are probably forgeries, copied from the originals during the Ming (1368-1644) or early Ching (Ch’ing; 1644-1912) dynasties. Because of the great Japanese admiration for Xia, which began during the Ashikaga period (Muromachi; 1336-1573), many more of his works are located throughout Japan. In particular, several private Japanese galleries have excellent examples of Xia’s work. The Beijing and Taipei palace museums also have fine collections by Xia Gui.

Significance

During several centuries subsequent to the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty in 1279, Xia Gui, together with Ma Yuan, suffered the stigma of having labored for a weak and ultimately supine imperial court. Furthermore, Chinese critics labeled the two as being leaders of the so-called northern school of painters, which the critics considered substantially inferior to the southern, or proper, school. This was not as much a criticism of their style as it was a suggestion that gentlemen-scholars do not paint for a living but rather pursue art only as a hobby to complement scholarship. Another reproach that later critics aimed at the two, although perhaps more at Ma than at Xia, was that they were academic painters whose technique could be learned. This criticism, however, misses the mark, for there is no question that the totality of a Xia painting is unique, and its spirit defies imitation.

Much like Ma Yuan, Xia Gui drew on existing styles and techniques. In addition to the aforementioned ax-stroke and one-cornered methods, Xia used the squeezed-brush technique to paint mountains, and his water was of the fighting-water style. The sum total of his work, however, marks him not merely as one of the two luminaries of the influential Ma-Xia school but also as one of the dominant figures in Chinese landscape painting. Xia’s greatest influence, however, may not have been on subsequent Chinese painters, but rather on numerous schools of Japanese art. Initially, during the Ashikaga shogunate, the works of Ma Yuan were more in demand in Japan than were those of Xia. By the time of Nōami (1397-1494), however, a definite shift had occurred, and Xia Gui had become a legendary figure among Japanese artists. Several of his techniques were of great importance in the development of Japanese painting from the late fifteenth century through the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). To this day, Xia’s paintings are greatly admired by Japanese collectors.

By the middle of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), there was already substantial praise for Xia Gui among Chinese art critics. The considerable interest in Xia shown by the Japanese and, more recently, by Western critics has led to an even greater admiration of Xia in China itself, and Chinese critics today are rightfully proud of this great artist.

Bibliography

Barnhart, Richard M., et al. Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997. The chapter “The Five Dynasties and the Song Period (907-1279)” discusses the Ma-Xia painters. This oversize book includes beautiful color plates and a helpful glossary.

Cahill, James. Chinese Painting. New York: Rizzoli International, 1977. Contains a chapter devoted to Ma Yuan, Xia Gui, and Ma Lin, with examples of their work.

Cahill, James. An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings: T’ang, Sung, and Yuan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Contains a lengthy list of paintings attributed to Xia Gui that are located in museums and private collections.

Fong, Wen C., and James Watt. Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996. Informative discussions of the Ma-Xia school and its artists, especially in the chapter on the Imperial Painting Academy of the Song Dynasty. Beautifully illustrated with examples of paintings by the Ma-Xia artists.

Lee, Sherman. Chinese Landscape Painting. 1954. Reprint. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962. Contains examples of Xia’s art, together with a brief critique of his technique.

Loehr, Max. The Great Painters of China. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Contains a very brief sketch of Xia Gui’s life and an excellent discussion of his technique. Also has several photographs of Xia’s paintings.

Sullivan, Michael. The Arts of China. 4th ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Contains a brief passage about Ma Yuan and Xia Gui with examples of their work.