High Middle Ages · East Asia · Culture

1105

Mi Fu paints in the Song academy

1105

The eccentric Chinese painter and calligrapher Mi Fu, famous for bowing to unusual rocks and refusing to sit where an ordinary man had sat, developed his misty ink-wash landscapes under imperial patronage. His techniques would be studied and imitated for a thousand years. Mi Fu's method of building mountains from horizontal ink-dots rather than outlines revolutionized the literati painting tradition and earned him a place alongside the greatest Song masters.