Zhong Kui

Category

Library Item

Item no

19001

Title

Zhong Kui

Description

Zhong Kui is a guardian figure in East Asian mythology, known as the Demon Queller. He appeared to the Chinese emperor Xuanzong in a dream during an illness, and dispatched a demon who had been haunting the palace and stealing treasured items. On awaking, the emperor was recovered and he commissioned the court painter Wu Daozi to create an image of this figure. Zhong Kui is represented in the garb of a Chinese official, with large boots and cap ties flying, and is often shown grasping a pesky demon.

Artist / maker

Kano, Tanryu Moritama

Date

1845

Size

28.8 x 14.5 cm

Type

Ink and colour; Mixed media

Location

Art and Design Library

From an album of miniature hanging scrolls

This album comprises 76 pages of miniature paintings (and some calligraphies), the majority by artists of the Kano lineage, who worked for the ruling military regime. Each work is signed and sealed in miniature, and has been given a full brocade mounting as if it were a hanging scroll.

Information provided by Dr Rosina Buckland (National Museum of Scotland).

This album was donated to Edinburgh City Libraries by Marie Ferguson Dyer in honour of her father Henry Dyer. Dyer was a Scottish engineer who became the first Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo in 1872.

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