Gai Qi (; 1774–1829),

courtesy name A courtesy name ( zh, s=字, p=zì, l=character), also known as a style name, is an additional name bestowed upon individuals at adulthood, complementing their given name. This tradition is prevalent in the East Asian cultural sphere, particula ...

Bowen 伯蕰,

art name An art name (pseudonym or pen name), also known by its native names ''hào'' (in Mandarin Chinese), ''gō'' (in Japanese), ' (in Korean), and ''tên hiệu'' (in Vietnamese), is a professional name used by artists, poets and writers in the Sinosp ...

s Qiliang 七郎 and Yuhu Waishi 玉壶外史, was a poet and painter born in western

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

during the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. As an artist, he was active in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

. His paintings mainly concerns plants, beauty, and figures. However, he also did numerous landscapes. In poetry, he preferred the rhyming ''ci'' form and added such poems to his paintings. His social circle included prominent literati as well as artists. He organized both a literary society and a Buddhist lay society. His work often used a delicate ''baimiao'' (outline) style, which can be clearly seen in his illustrations for the novel, '' Dream of the Red Chamber''. The illustrations are chiefly portraits of the main characters in the novel. Numerous poets, including the renowned woman poet Zhou Qi, wrote poems to accompany the illustrations. The scholar Wang Qisun (王岂孙) commissioned Gai Qi to paint an album of famous Chinese women, both historical and legendary. Wang's second wife, Cao Zhenxiu, wrote poems about the women and produced the calligraphy in the album. Gai took as a student the talented woman painter and poet Qian Shoupu (錢守璞) (c. 1801–1869). He was associated with the painter Fei Danxu in what has been called the "Gai Fei" school. Gai's grandson continued the tradition of the Gai Fei school, along with the descendants of Fei Danxiu. He is perhaps best-known today for the ''Hongloumeng tiyong'', a book of portraits of characters in the ''Dream of the Red Chamber,'' accompanied by poems about the characters. Gai's work is held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, the

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 1961 ...

, the Johnson Museum of Art, the Palace Museum, the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, the

University of Michigan Museum of Art The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) is one of the largest university art museums in the United States, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with . Built as a war memorial in 1909 for the university's fallen alumni from the Civil War, Alu ...

, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the list of largest art museums, 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 painting ...

, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

References

Sources

*Chinese Paintings in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford(45)

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

China on-site
*''Zhongguo lidai shinü huaji'' 中國歷代仕女畫集 (A collection of paintings of women through the ages) edited by Guo Xueshi 郭学是and Zhang Zikang. 张子康 (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin meishu chubanshe and Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1998). *''Hidden Meanings of Love and Death in Chinese Painting: Selections from the Marilyn and Roy Papp Collection.'' Edited by Chun-yi Lee. (Phoenix: Phoenix Art Museum, 2013), esp. pp. 36–42. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gai, Qi 1774 births 1829 deaths Qing dynasty painters Qing dynasty poets Painters from Shanghai Poets from Shanghai Buddhist artists