Gong Kai

In 1271, Kublai Khan began assembling the oppressed Chinese people of the Song dynasty to rise up against the current government.

Even though he had previously served under the former government, Gong Kai, being from Southern China, was now at the bottom of the social hierarchy under the Yuan dynasty.

After the defeating of the Song, Gong Kai fled to Hangzhou on the Yangtze River where he would spend his time writing and painting.

The only sources of income to the family were the sale of Gong Kai's paintings and calligraphy and the occasional trade for essential goods.

Some accounts even suggest that Gong Kai was not able to afford a table and instead laid the paper on his son's back to paint.

Due to the Yuan conquest of the Song and the difficult economic state, the existence of many professional art schools and painters in China began to decline.

In fact, Gong Kai's Jun Gu a Noble Horse very closely resembles the painting Night-Shining White by Han Gan in the Tang dynasty.

In previous years, this horse had been a noble, lively, and youthful creature, but now is reduced to a mere skeleton, clutching onto the last pieces of his shattered dignity.

A poem associated with the painting reads: “Ever since the clouds and mist fell upon the Heavenly Pass, Empty have been the twelve imperial stables of the former dynasty.

In the light of the setting sun, on the sandy bank, he casts his towering shadow – like a mountain!”[1] Gong Kai's second most famous work of art is Zhong Kui Traveling, also from the Yuan dynasty.

When Zhong Kui originated, he was basically a god of folklore legends who prevailed over ghosts and controlled demons.

According to legend, Emperor Minghuang of the Tang dynasty claimed that Zhong Kui first appeared to him in a dream.

As a loyalist of the Song dynasty, Gong Kai probably used this painting as a way of expressing that he longed for a being like Zhong Kui to chase the Mongols, or “demons,” out of the country.

Both paintings are kept at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Cai Wenji was born at the end of the second century, during the Han dynasty.

Nonetheless, scholars attribute this painting to Gong Kai because of knowledge of an illustrated Cai Wenji story done by him.

Several other possible paintings of his are the hanging scrolls titled The Three Stars, Searching for Plum Blossoms by Boat, and Fishing with Cormorants.