KUNG HSIEN

born c. 1618, , K'un-shan, Kiangsu Province, China died 1689 Pinyin Gong Xian most important artist of the group known as the Eight Masters of Nanking. He spent most of his life in Nanking and was regarded by his contemporaries as aloof and eccentric. He died in poverty. Short, broad vertical strokes characterize Kung's paintings, which, like those of Ni Tsan in the Yan dynasty (12061368), typically contain no human figures; yet in contrast to that earlier artist, his paintings are rich with ink to produce unusually dense and even forbidding landscapes. While he knew well traditional Chinese painting and revealed such knowledge in his art, it has been suggested that his darkly contrasting surfaces owe something to Western illusionistic techniques, which were then to be seen in Nanking in engravings brought by Western missionaries.