Li Tang

or Li T'ang

(born c. 1050—died c. 1130) Chinese painter. He earned the highest rank in the academy of painting of Emperor Huizong, and after the North fell to the Mongols he went to the South and entered the academy of Emperor Song Gaozong. His landscapes serve as a vital link between the earlier, and essentially Northern, variety of monumental landscape, and the more lyrical Southern style of the Ma-Xia school (based on the work of Ma Yuan and Xia Gui). Li perfected the brushstroke texture known as the “ax stroke,” which gives a tactile sense to painted rocks and suggests the precise and comprehensive reality that Southern Song artists sought to give their landscapes.

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