Dong Qichang

Dong Qichang

 or Tung Ch'i-ch'ang

(born 1555, Huating, Kiangsu province, China—died 1636) Chinese painter, calligrapher, and theoretician of the late Ming period. He is noted especially for his writings on Chinese painting, which he divided into the Northern school, which taught the acquisition of truth, and the Southern school, which emphasized sudden, intuitive understanding. At the centre of the scholarly ideal of the Southern school was the art of calligraphy, which expressed the true nature of the artist without the interposition of pictorial description. Dong Qichang's own paintings stress stark forms, seemingly anomalous spatial renderings, and naive handling of ink and brush. His ideas continue to influence Chinese aesthetic theory.