Baojue

CHINA, Hunan, Changsha; Northern Song dynasty

Baojue was an accomplished poet, painter, and monk of Jinshan Temple in Jiangsu. An exchange of poems with his friend, Wang Anshi, a politician and philosopher, revealed Baojue’s poetic talents. Their friendship is illustrated in Admiring the Passing Clouds Together Under the Bell Mountain, a poem in Wang Anshi’s book, Linchuan’s Collection of Writings.
Baojue excelled in the portrayal of animals, especially birds, and was reputed alongside artists, Aixuan and Zhang Jingqi. Mi Fu, a well-known painter, calligrapher, and art critic, acknowledged Baojue’s refined skills in History of Painting. Huang Tingjian, a scholar and calligrapher, described the his paintings as more expressive and lively than those of Huizong, a contemporary artist also from Changsha. His depictions of cranes in A Pair of Cranes listed in Record of Clouds and Mist Passing Before One’s Eyes, written by Zhou Mi, were so well-executed that they were said to have been mistaken for the masterpieces of Xueji, a famed painter of the Early Tang period (618–712).