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, 00:10, 6 May 2013
*''Born: [[1254]]''
*''Died: [[1322]]''
*''Chinese'': [[趙]]孟頫 ''(Zhao Mengfu)''
Zhao Mengfu was a court painter under the [[Yuan Dynasty]], and is today regarded as one of the greatest painters of his time.
A descendant of the [[Song Dynasty]] imperial family, Zhao was nevertheless accepted into the Yuan Dynasty court, as a court painter, in [[1287]]. He married [[Guan Daosheng]] in [[1289]], who went on to become a notable painter in her own right. Zhao had one son and four daughters from an earlier marriage; he and Guan Daosheng had two more sons and two more daughters.
Following the death of [[Kubilai Khan]] in [[1294]], Zhao returned to his childhood home in Wuxing, Huzhou, in [[Zhejiang province]], spending several years there idly. He returned to government service in [[1300]], serving as the head of Confucian schools in the Zhejiang-[[Jiangsu province|Jiangsu]] region.
One of his most famous paintings, held today in the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian,<ref>"[http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/singleObject.cfm?ObjectNumber=F1931.4 Sheep and Goat]," Freer-Sackler Galleries of Art. F1931.4.</ref> and depicting a sheep and a goat, has been described as alluding to his political identity and situation under the foreign Mongol dynasty. They do this by alluding to the [[Han Dynasty]] figures Su Wu and Li Ling, one of whom served under the barbarian [[Xiongnu]] rulers, and one of whom refused to do so and instead became a shepherd.
==References==
*Valerie Hansen, ''The Open Empire'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2000), 359-363.
[[Category:Artists and Artisans]]
[[Category:Kamakura Period]]