or Li T'ang
born 0441; 1050
died 0441; 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.