EIGHT ECCENTRICS OF YANG-CHOU

Pinyin Yangzhou, Chinese painters who worked in the area of Yang-chou, in Kiangsu Province, during the Ch'ien-lung era (173596) of the Ch'ing dynasty (see Ch'ing dynasty). The group includes Cheng Hsieh, Chin Nung, Huang Shen, Kao Hsiang, Li Fang-ying, Li Shan, Lo P'ing, and Wang Shih-shen. Other artists, such as Hua Yen, are sometimes included. Although the grouping is more a geographical than a stylistic one, certain similarities are discernible: generally, the paintings are rather briefly sketched, small-scale renditions of the less monumental aspects of nature, and a certain creative independence of style is perceptiblethus the appellation pa-kuai, eight eccentrics, or eight strange ones.