Yi Yuanji (Chinese:易元吉;Wade-Giles:I Yüan-chi) (c. 1000,Changsha,Hunan[1] – c. 1064) was aNorthern Song dynasty painter, famous for his realistic paintings of animals. According toRobert van Gulik, Yi Yuanji's paintings ofgibbons were particularly celebrated.[2][3]
The 11th-century criticGuo Ruoxu (郭若虚) in hisOverview of Painting (图画见闻志,Tuhua Jian Wen Zhi) tells this about Yi's career:[4][5]
... His painting was excellent: flowers and birds, bees andcicadas he rendered life-like with subtle detail. At first he specialized in flower and fruit, but after he had seen such paintings byZhao Chang (趙昌), he admitted their superiority with a sigh, and then resolved he would acquire fame by painting subjects not yet tried by the artists of old; thus he began to paint roebucks and gibbons.
He spent months roaming the mountains of southernHubei and northernHunan, watchingroebucks (獐鹿) and gibbons (猿狖) in their natural environment.[2]
In 1064, Yi Yuanji was invited to paint screens in the imperial palace. Once this job has been completed, theYingzong Emperor, impressed, commissioned him to paint thePicture of a Hundred Gibbons, but the artist died after painting only a few gibbons.[1][2] A few of his other gibbon paintings have survived, andRobert van Gulik, quite familiar with the behavior of this ape, comments on how naturally they look in the pictures.[2] His other work includes depictions of deer, peacocks, birds-and-flowers and fruits-and-vegetables; many of them are kept in theNational Palace Museum inTaipei.[1] TheMonkey and Cats painting is especially charming.[6] Van Gulik identifies the monkey as amacaque.[2] This painting was featured on a 2004 "Year of the Monkey" stamp fromSaint Vincent and the Grenadines.[7]
The image of Yi Yuanji, with his intimate knowledge of nature, has attracted attention from modern Chinese painters.[8]
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