(b Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province, 19 Aug 1911). Chinese painter. She studied Chinese painting in Beijing in 1925; in 1926 she enrolled in the Academy of Art in Beijing to study Western painting; she then attended the art department of the Beiping Central University in Nanjing. In 1937 she went to Europe to study sculpture. On her return to China she worked in art schools and from 1949 taught watercolour, oil and traditional Chinese painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Her work was widely exhibited in China and abroad, notably after 1979, when she travelled with her husband, Wu Zuoren, for a series of lectures and joint exhibitions in Asia, Europe and the USA. After 1972 Xiao concentrated on Chinese flower painting, for which she is best known. She worked in a style that fused watercolour techniques with the mogu (‘boneless’) manner of traditional Chinese painting, creating an elegant and graceful world of luminous colours and translucent washes.