Huang Ding
Chinese, 1650 –1730
Huang Ding ?? (1660-1730) [zi: Zungu ??, hao: Xianpu ??, Kuangting ??, Duwangke ???, Jinggouraoren????], was born a commoner in Changshu ??, Jiangsu, the hometown of Wang Hui ?? (1632-1717). He was a student of Wang Yuanqi ???(1642-1715) and, indeed, was the oldest and most important of Wang Yuanqi's followers in the Loudong school (named after the region east of the Lou River where Wang was born). Huang Ding was skilled in imitation old paintings and was especially adept to the manner of the Yuan master Wang Meng (1308-1385) .The 1739 Guochao huazheng lu (Record of Inquiry into the Painters of the Qing Dynasty) says that Huang Ding combined Wang Yuanqi's teachings with ideas that he had learned from Wang Hui, although Huang is sometimes descried as a rival of Wang Hui.
Huang Ding's "Landscape after Wang Meng's Autumn Mountain" scroll at the Honolulu Academy of Arts was painted for the owner of the Studio of Bright Clouds, Suo Fen (Wong Nan-p'ing) (d. 1708), a Manchu literati, Suo Fen had also been the holder of a short handscroll, "Transporting Bamboo," by Wang Hui, dated 1698. Based on Marshall Wu's examination, Huang Ding and Wang Hui painted these paintings for Suo Fen in Beijing during the same period, and possibly they met at Suo Fen's house, and Huang might have beseeched Wang Hui for advice. The poet and prominent scholar Shen Deqian ??? (1673-1769), who was a friend of Huang Ding and the author of his epitaph, reported contemporary critics' assessment of the relationship between the two masters: "Wang Hui saw all the famous pictures of old and modern times, and his works were perfectly finished; he may indeed be called a great master. But Huang Ding saw all the mountains and rivers of the whole world, and his paintings have the effect of life. He must likewise be called a great master." Shen Dequian also notes that Huang traveled all his life and that whenever he saw strange or unusual sights, he would included them in his paintings. Zhang Zongcang ??? (1686-1756), a little known painter, was known as Huang Ding's disciple.
Richard M. Barnhart ed., The Jade Studio: Masterpieces of Ming and Qing Painting and Calligraphy from the Wong Nan-p'ing Collection. (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1994) 188-189
