Xia Gui

Xia Gui
Detail from the hand scroll Pure and Remote View of Streams and Mountains, one of Xia Gui's most important works
Born	fl. 1195
Died	1224
Nationality	Chinese
Known for	Painting
Movement	Southern Song Dynasty, Ma-Xia School

Xia Gui (Chinese: 夏圭 or 夏珪; Wade–Giles: Hsia Kui; fl. 1195–1224), courtesy name Yuyu (禹玉), was a Chinese landscape painter of the Song dynasty. Very little is known about his life, and only a few of his works survive, but he is generally considered one of China's greatest artists. He continued the tradition of Li Tang, further simplifying the earlier Song style to achieve a more immediate, striking effect. Together with Ma Yuan, he founded the so-called Ma-Xia (馬夏) school, one of the most important of the period.

Although Xia was popular during his lifetime, his reputation suffered after his death, together with that of all Southern Song academy painters. Nevertheless, a few artists, including the Japanese master Sesshū, continued Xia's tradition for hundreds of years, until the early 17th century.

No information survives on Xia's birth and death dates, background, or education. He was most probably born in Hangzhou, then capital of China. During the reign of Emperor Ningzong Xia served in the Imperial Painting Academy (Yuhuayuan 廷畫院) in the same city, the way most major artists did at the time. His teachers are unknown, but the surviving works suggest strong influence of Li Tang, a prominent academy painter whose style was a prominent influence on virtually all 12th-century Chinese landscape painters. Xia Gui and his contemporary, Ma Yuan, were among the most influential painters of their time; they had numerous followers who are now referred to as belonging to the Ma-Xia school.

Academy art of the Southern Song was not appreciated during later periods, i.e. during the Yuan dynasty and afterwards; hence Xia's popularity declined. However, he a few critics felt that his paintings were among the better works of the Song Dynasty, and some Chinese artists were still producing works inspired by Xia's idiom. Sesshū Tōyō visited China in the 15th century and was influenced by Xia Gui, as seen in Sesshū's landscape scrolls such as the smaller Landscape of the Four Seasons in the Kyoto National Museum gallery. Sesshū's numerous followers, the so-called Unkoku-rin School, sometimes imitated the style their teacher adopted from Xia.