Li Tang

or Li T'ang

born с 1050

died с 1130

Chinese painter.

He earned the highest rank in the academy of painting of Emperor Huizong, and after the North fell to the Mongols he went to the South and entered the academy of Emperor Song Gaozong. His landscapes serve as a vital link between the earlier, and essentially Northern, variety of monumental landscape, and the more lyrical Southern style of the Ma-Xia school (based on the work of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui). Li perfected the brushstroke texture known as the "ax stroke," which gives a tactile sense to painted rocks and suggests the precise and comprehensive reality that Southern Song artists sought to give their landscapes.

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▪ Chinese painter

Wade-Giles romanization  Li T'ang  

born c. 1050

died c. 1130

 major Chinese painter who lived during both the Northern and the Southern Song dynasties (Song dynasty) and established a style of painting that became the base for the academy-style landscape of the Southern Song.

      He earned the highest rank in the academy of painting of Emperor Huizong, and, after the North fell to the Mongols, went to the South and entered the academy of Emperor Song Gaozong. His landscapes—of which one dated 1124 is the most reliably ascribed—serve as a vital link between the earlier, and essentially Northern, variety of monumental landscape, and the more lyrical Southern style of the Ma-Xia school. Li perfected the brushstroke texture known as the “ax stroke,” which gives a tactile sense to painted rocks and suggests the precise and comprehensive reality that Southern Song artists sought to give their landscapes.

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