Xia Yong
Master of meticulous ink architectural paintings
Xia Yong(夏永) (exact birth and death years unknown), courtesy name Mingyuan(明远), was from Qiantang (now Hangzhou, Zhejiang) and was a painter during the Yuan Dynasty. He studied under Wang Zhenpeng, a court painter from the early Yuan period, and was known for his architectural paintings, especially small ink drawings of buildings, blending towers and pavilions seamlessly into natural landscapes. His architectural painting techniques were meticulous, with lines as fine as hair, and he often wrote poems and inscriptions in tiny regular script on his works. Notable works include 'Tengwang Pavilion,' 'Yellow Crane Tower,' and 'Yueyang Tower,' many of which feature the full texts of Wang Bo’s 'Preface to Tengwang Pavilion' or Fan Zhongyan’s 'Record of Yueyang Tower.' The album of 'Yueyang Tower,' made in the seventh year of Zhizheng (1347), is now in the Palace Museum. Other pieces like 'Fengle Pavilion' and 'Tower Landscape' are held in the Yunnan Provincial Museum, Shanghai Museum, and some overseas collections. His works are praised for their precise compositions combined with calligraphy and were described in 'Talks Among Flowers' as 'matching the skill of ghosts.'