Qiu Ying
The artisan among the scholars.
Qiu Ying began as a lacquer painter and became one of the most admired painters of the Ming, known for richly detailed, colourful pictures.
Qiu Ying was born around 1494 in Taicang in present-day Jiangsu province and moved to Suzhou as a young man. Unlike the other great painters of the city, he was not a scholar with an examination degree but an artisan. He began as a lacquer painter and decorator and had no classical education. He died around 1552.
His talent was noticed, and he was able to study painting with Zhou Chen, who was also Tang Yin's teacher. He came into contact with wealthy collectors, among them Xiang Yuanbian, who owned one of the largest art collections of the Ming period. Qiu Ying lived at times with the collectors, copying and studying old masterpieces from the Tang and Song. This gave him an unusually broad technical knowledge.
Qiu Ying was a master of richly detailed, colourful pictures. He painted blue-green landscapes in an archaic style with mineral pigments, court scenes, gardens and beautiful women. Spring Morning in the Han Palace, a long handscroll in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, shows court ladies playing music, painting, playing games and tending flowers. He also made his own version of Along the River During the Qingming Festival. He could also paint in the simpler style of the scholars when required.
Although he was an artisan, Qiu Ying is counted among the Four Masters of the Ming, together with Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming and Tang Yin. His daughter Qiu Zhu also became a painter. His style was so popular that Suzhou's workshops produced large numbers of forgeries in his name, and many works bearing his signature are not by him.