Huichong
Master of poetic small landscapes
Huichong (965-1017), from Jianyang, Fujian, was a monk in the Northern Song Dynasty who excelled in poetry and painting. As a poet, he specialized in five-character regulated verse, often writing about small natural scenes. He avoided using allusions and preferred plain, detailed depictions, aiming for meticulous clarity, which was highly praised by famous figures like Ouyang Xiu. As a painter, he was 'skilled in painting geese, wild ducks, and herons, particularly good at small landscapes, adept at depicting chilly riverbanks and distant islets with a breezy openness that few could achieve' (Northern Song scholar Guo Ruoxu). Su Shi wrote a poem for Huichong's painting "Evening Scene on the Spring River": 'Beyond the bamboo, a branch or two of peach blossoms; the spring river warms, and the ducks know it first,' which made the work famous through the ages.