Wang Wei (or Wang Mo-ch'i) (699–759)

Chinese painter, poet, and musician. His poetical landscapes survive only in copies, but he ranks as a founder of the Southern School of Chinese painting.

An important aim of his art was to embody in a picture the emotion conveyed by a poem. He was also regarded as a founder of a type of brushwork in ink. He wrote a treatise on landscape painting, observing that ‘in painting landscapes the idea should exist in the mind before the brush is taken up’.