Wang Meng (painter)

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Wang Meng (c. 1308–1385) was a Chinese painter from the Yuan dynasty. He was born in Wuxing, now Huzhou in Zhejiang province, and was the maternal grandson of Zhao Mengfu, making him a descendant of the Song dynasty’s royal line on his mother’s side. He was wrongly accused of conspiring against Ming Emperor Taizu and spent the last five years of his life in jail.

Wang Meng is counted as one of the Four Masters of the Yuan, along with Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, and Ni Zan. They refused to serve the Mongol rulers and mostly worked on paper to emphasize brushwork. They painted only landscapes, believing nature could reveal a deeper reality, and they kept close to a circle of scholar-artists known as wenren.

Although he was the youngest and not as famous in his own time, Wang Meng greatly influenced later Chinese painting. His brushstrokes are described as ropy and dense, building textures into complex patterns. His best-known works include Ge Zhichuan Relocating, Forest Grotto at Juqu, Writing Books under the Pine Trees, The Simple Retreat, and Dwelling in the Qingbian Mountains. Today, many of his masterpieces are in major museums worldwide, such as the Palace Museum, National Palace Museum, Shanghai Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2011, a lesser-known work from a private collection, Zhichuan Resettlement, sold for 402.5 million yuan (about US$62.1 million).