Background
Wu Tao-tzu, also called Wu Tao-hsüan, was born in 689 in Yang-ti near Loyang, Honan Province, apparently into a family of humble means.
Wu Tao-tzu, also called Wu Tao-hsüan, was born in 689 in Yang-ti near Loyang, Honan Province, apparently into a family of humble means.
He was orphaned and penniless as a boy and may have begun his study of painting under the professional craftsmen employed to decorate Buddhist temples. According to tradition, he also studied calligraphy with the Buddhist monk Chang Hsü, who was famous for his "crazy cursive" script, emphasizing the madly kinesthetic qualities of the brush.
Wu's emphasis on the brush itself was to have profound impact on the later history of painting. This brilliant age of Chinese history was ended by the disastrous An Lu-shan rebellion of 755. Wu Tao-tzu survived the tragedy, but the last period of his life is unrecorded. The An Lu-shan rebellion was only the first of countless disasters-rebellions, religious persecutions, dynastic collapse-that have destroyed every trace of Wu's art.
He is honored by history as the "Sage of Painting, " and he commanded an army of followers, but his material legacy consists only of a few engravings of recent centuries, including the Spirit of the Heng Mountains, and a handful of late copies, like the Rulers of Hell in Chicago. They may preserve some idea of the master's work but scarcely its reality.
The speed and kinesthetic fury of his brush is the significant aspect of Wu Tao-tzu's art. He was among the first painters to develop a fluid, thickening-and-thinning brushline and to describe forms loosely and suggestively. The early history of Chinese figure painting is written in the successive achievements of three masters: Ku K'aichih, whose brushwork was "like silken thread; " Yen Lipen, who painted with "iron-wire line; " and Wu Taotzu, whose fluctuating, graphic brushwork was the first to acquire qualities of its own, separate from the forms it described. The influence of calligraphy, with its actual kinesthetic properties, was crucial to this development.
Quotes from others about the person
His genius was legendary, as was his unruly behavior: "He was fond of wine, which brought forth his spirit; before wielding the brush, he would invariably get drunk. "