Late-Sòng / Yuán painter, calligrapher, scholar-official, and Daoist sympathiser, zì Zǐáng 子昂, hào Sōngxuě dàorén 松雪道人 (“Daoist of the Pine-Snow”), native of Wúxīng 吳興 (modern Húzhōu 湖州, Zhèjiāng) and a tenth-generation descendant of Sòng Tàizǔ 宋太祖 through his fourth son. Lifedates 1254–1322 (CBDB 17690).
Although born to the Zhào imperial line of the Sòng, Zhào Mèngfǔ never held office under the Southern Sòng. After the Yuán conquest he initially withdrew, but in 1286 he was summoned to the Mongol court by Khubilai Khan and entered Yuán service, eventually rising to high office (his floruit at court runs CBDB 1286–1310) and earning the academic title Jíxián xuéshì 集賢學士 (“Academician of the Hall of Assembled Worthies”). He served on the Hànlín and Jíxián academies, and was posthumously enfeoffed Wèi guó gōng 魏國公. He is universally regarded as one of the greatest calligraphers and painters of imperial China; his calligraphic style — based on a rigorous return to Wáng Xīzhī 王羲之 and the Two Wángs — defined the orthodoxy of late-imperial brushwork, and his paintings of horses, landscapes, and bamboo set the agenda for Yuán literati art.
Zhào’s connection to the Daoist canon is mediated by his teacher and mentor Dù Dàojiān 杜道堅 (杜道堅, 1237–1318), the prominent Zhèngyī 正一 abbot of Hú zhōu, who in 1286 invited him to compose the Xuányuán shízǐ tú 玄元十子圖 (KR5a0164, DZ 163; “Portraits of Ten Masters of the Mysterious Origin”). Zhào’s colophon to this work, dated Zhìyuán 至元 23 (1286) New Year, records that Dù Dàojiān had asked him in childhood to make portraits and short biographies of Lǎozǐ and his ten disciples, intending the work to be “stored in a famous mountain to bequeath to posterity.” The work was reissued and inscribed with new prefaces by leading Yuán Daoists during the Dàdé 大德 era (1297–1307), including the Thirty-eighth Heavenly Master Zhāng Yǔcái 張與材 (d. 1316). Zhào also wrote a preface to the Wénzǐ 文子 — the Tōngxuán zhēnjīng zuǎnyì 通玄真經纂義 of his teacher Dù Dàojiān (杜道堅) — which has come down in DZ 746–747; the Tàiqīng gōng 太清宫 stele inscriptions of 1312 and 1322 also bear his signature.
For works in the Kanripo corpus by Zhào Mèngfǔ see KR5a0164 (Xuányuán shízǐ tú, 1286).
CBDB: 17690. CBD 4, 3520; Wú Dèngyǔ 元人傳記資料索引電子版 11347.