Yi Yuanji
Yi Yuanji was a Northern Song dynasty painter, famous for his realistic paintings of animals. According to Robert van Gulik, Yi Yuanji's paintings of gibbons were particularly celebrated.
The 11th-century critic Guo Ruoxu in his Overview of Painting says the following about Yi's career:
He spent months roaming the mountains of southern Hubei and northern Hunan, watching roebucks and gibbons in their natural environment.
In 1064, Yi Yuanji was invited to paint screens in the imperial palace. Once this job was completed, the Yingzong Emperor, impressed, commissioned him to paint the Picture of a Hundred Gibbons, but the artist died after painting only a few gibbons. A few of his other gibbon paintings have survived, and van Gulik, quite familiar with the behavior of this ape, comments on how natural they look in the paintings. His other work includes depictions of deer, peacocks, birds-and-flowers and fruits-and-vegetables; many of them are kept in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The Monkey and Cats painting has been described as an outstanding example of playfulness and intimacy. Van Gulik identifies the monkey as a macaque. This painting was featured on a 2004 "Year of the Monkey" stamp from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The image of Yi Yuanji, with his intimate knowledge of nature, has attracted attention from modern Chinese painters.