Hsia Kuei (shyä gwā), c.1180–1230, Chinese painter of the Sung dynasty. Little is known of his life. He and his contemporary Ma Yüan were regarded as the greatest landscape painters of the day and were the founders of the so-called Ma-Hsia school of landscape painting. Hsia was especially known for his skillful use of empty spaces, which he outlined with firm, decisive strokes. Many later artists tried to recapture his style. Twelve River Views in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Mo., is one of the better examples of many paintings attributed to him.

Xia Gui

or Hsia Kuei

(flourished 1195–1224, Qiantang, Zhejiang province, China) Chinese master of landscape painting. Xia served in the Imperial Painting Academy, and most sources agree that he followed the stylistic tradition of an earlier landscapist in the academy, Li Tang. Xia and his contemporary, Ma Yuan, were the most influential members of the academy, and a school of painting inspired by them came to be known as the Ma-Xia school. Most of Xia's surviving works are album leaves painted on silk. A typical work by him is exquisitely calculated and perfectly balanced, conveying with great precision a scene glimpsed through haze, sharply focused at a few points but obscured at others. Chinese writers spoke of his use of a “split brush” (i.e., the brush tip divided so as to make two or more strokes at once) in painting tree foliage and of his freehand drawing “without employing a ruler.” While his influence was considerable, it was only in modern times that he came to be recognized as one of the leading masters of Chinese landscape painting and one of art's great interpreters of nature.

Xia Gui, Hsia Kuei

?1180--1230, Chinese landscape painter of the Sung dynasty; noted for his misty mountain landscapes in ink monochrome