Ming Dynasty Painter Xie Shichen Research

Shichen XEE, one of the famous artists in the mid of Ming Dynasty i n Suzhou. He was a prestigious artist during the period of Zhengde and Ji ajing. However, after his death, there was fewer people discuss about him and he was suddenly disappeared. His missing is now becoming an intere sting topic for discussion in the art history. Although he was a great artist who had a large amount of paintings with high quality justified by the fa mily of Wu, he was rarely mentioned by the history of art published in Mi ng or Qing Dynasty. As a result, we are not familiar with his life and pain ting style and we even don’t know his existence.In order to filling in the blank in the history, this article is a research about Shichen XIE by using the basic principle of the artist studies, mainl y focus on his life, identity, his paintings, painting styles, achievement an d his position in the painting history. From my point of view, his painting style has the similarity with each painting family. However it was a com bination of each of them. His identity has not only the characteristic of Y u painting but also has the feeling of the literati painters. Therefore, his pa inting style and identity both have a little multiplicity. Because of this mu ltiplicity, it was difficult to discuss and classified him and this led to a res ult of him disappearing in the history.By investigating Shichen XIE’s life and his painting style, we conclu de that his painting style was a mixture of both the sect of Zhe and Wu, between Song and Yuan. His identity could be defined as an artist with a multiple characteristic. Therefore, we can confirm his presence in the hist ory of art around mid Ming Dynasty. Further more, his multiple painting styles was not the only case in the art history of Ming Dynasty so we can not simply discuss the art by only looking the sects in the mid Ming Dyna sty with only Zhe or Wu. We should put ourselves in a different position, focus on the artists that their painting style had a multiple characteristic a nd learn how their styles changing the history of art in the Ming Dynasty.