Yi Yuanji

Yi Yuanji (Chinese: 易元吉; Wade-Giles: I Yüan-chi) (c. 1000, Changsha, Hunan[1] – c. 1064) was a Northern Song dynasty painter, famous for his realistic paintings of animals.

[2] [3] The 11th-century critic Guo Ruoxu (郭若虚) in his Overview of Painting (图画见闻志, Tuhua Jian Wen Zhi) tells this about Yi's career:[4][5] ... His painting was excellent: flowers and birds, bees and cicadas he rendered life-like with subtle detail.

[1][2] A few of his other gibbon paintings have survived, and Robert van Gulik, quite familiar with the behavior of this ape, comments on how naturally they look in the pictures.

[2] His other work includes depictions of deer, peacocks, birds-and-flowers and fruits-and-vegetables; many of them are kept in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.

[7] The image of Yi Yuanji, with his intimate knowledge of nature, has attracted attention from modern Chinese painters.