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Li Kan [zi Zhongbin; hao Xizhai Daoren]
(b Beijing, 1244; d Yangzhou, Zhejiang province, 1320). Chinese painter and government official. He was born in northern China after the Mongols had taken over that area from the Jürchen Jin dynasty (1115–1234) but before they had conquered southern China. As a result he spent his life serving under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which ruled China from 1279 to 1368. From a modest family, he began as a petty official and was gradually promoted to become one of the highest officials at court. As a boy he had studied the paintings of Wang Danyou and his father Wang Tingyun, the greatest painter of bamboo during the Jin period. Their work led him to study that of Wen Tong, the originator of the literati tradition of bamboo painting during the Northern Song period (960–1127). Absorbing these examples, Li developed his own style and came to be recognized as the great bamboo painter of the early Yuan period. In his wide travels in southern China and in Annam (now Vietnam), where he acted as an envoy, he studied the many different species of bamboo and in 1307 completed Zhupu xianglu (‘Bamboo manual’). Combining the study of paintings of the old masters as models with observation of bamboo in its natural habitat, he was able to achieve a new synthesis in this genre.
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