Xia Chang

CHINA, Jiangsu, Suzhou; Ming dynasty

Xia Chang, whose original surname was Zhu and was also known as Zhongzhao, was a calligrapher and painter from Kunshan, Suzhou. After returning to his hometown upon retirement from a position in the imperial government, he immersed himself in calligraphy and painting. His ink paintings, which are composed of a style he learned from Wang Fu and most often featured bamboo, utilized strong and flowing brushstrokes in a dark green color.
One of his extant Buddhist paintings, currently kept at the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, is Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva in a Bamboo Forest. The image depicts Avalokitesvara peacefully sitting on a flat rock amid a bamboo forest. A vast majority of his other paintings also included bamboo as the main or supporting theme, many of which are kept at the Shanghai Museum. In addition, Fresh Wind over the Qi River and Bamboo in Wind are kept at the Palace Museum in Beijing; Bamboo Forest in Spring Rain at the Nanjing Museum in Jiangsu; another Bamboo in Wind at Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA; and several others are located at various places including Guangdong Provincial Museum in Guangzhou; Tianjin Museum; and Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin, Germany.