Shi Rui
Meticulous Ming court painter of blue-green landscapes
Shi Rui(石銳), courtesy name Yiming(以明), was from Qiantang (now Hangzhou) during the Ming Dynasty and worked as a professional painter. During the Xuande period, he was appointed to the position of court attendant at the Renzhi Hall, making him a court painter of the Ming Dynasty. His works are recorded in documents like the "Illustrated Treasures of Painting, Continued" and the "Hangzhou Gazetteer." Shi Rui's painting style followed the tradition of Sheng Mao from the Yuan Dynasty. He was especially skilled in gilt-and-blue landscapes, architectural paintings, and figure paintings, known for their meticulous and ornate style with bright and gentle colors. Very few of his works survive today. The Palace Museum holds the original scroll of "Spring Sunshine Over Mountain Inn." The Shandong Museum also has some of his landscape scrolls. The Freer Gallery of Art in the U.S. houses his painting "Zhu Maichen Carrying Firewood and Studying," the National Palace Museum in Taipei has "Xuanyuan Asking the Dao," and the Cleveland Museum of Art holds "Waiting for the Moon on Mid-Autumn Night." Other works like the scroll "Immortal Mountains and Towers" have also survived. In 1639, Xiao Yuncong wrote a colophon on one of his blue-and-green landscape scrolls. Shi Rui was active in the mid-15th century and, along with artists like Dai Jin, Xie Tingxun, Li Zai, Ni Duan, and Zhou Wenjing, was a representative painter at the painting academy during the Xuande period.