Sun Wei
Master of dragons and dynamic water
Sun Wei (birth and death years unknown), later renamed Yu, styled himself as the Kuaiji Mountain Man, was a painter at the end of the Tang Dynasty, originally from Kuaiji (now Shaoxing, Zhejiang). During the Guangqi period (885-888), he entered Sichuan with Emperor Xizong of Tang due to the Huang Chao uprising and settled in Chengdu. He was skilled in painting people, gods, pines and rocks, and ink bamboo, being especially famous for his dragons and water scenes. He was often mentioned alongside Zhang Nanben. In Sichuan, he created murals in temples such as Yingtian, Zhaojue, and Fuhai. His brushwork was concise and grand. The "Xuanhe Huapu" recorded 27 of his works, including "Image of Taishang Teaching" and "Vimalakirti Diagram." Sun Wei’s paintings combined fine detail with bold strokes. The "Famous Paintings of Yizhou" ranks him at the highest level of originality. His depictions of heavenly kings and dragons in water were vivid and lifelike, blending simple brush techniques with meticulous skill. A surviving work, "Gao Yi Tu," is a fragment of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove," showing the figures of Shan Tao, Wang Rong, Liu Ling, and Ruan Ji. His line work continued Gu Kaizhi’s delicate thread-like technique, and the coloring followed Tang dynasty figure painting traditions. It is now housed in the Shanghai Museum. In his water paintings, he "shapes according to the object, capturing all the changes of water," pioneering a new approach to turbulent rapids and huge waves. Five Dynasties painter Huang Quan and others studied his techniques.