Ashmolean Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Wu Junqing, better known as Wu Changshuo, spent his early life in Anji in Zhejiang province. In his late twenties he went to Suzhou and became acquainted with ancient ritual bronze vessels, calligraphy and painting in private collections. He became a poet and calligrapher with a renowned interest in early scripts and epigraphy and only later did he consider himself a painter; he was founding chairman of the Xiling Seal-carving Society. He was an associate of the leading Shanghai School painters of the late nineteenth century, in particular Ren Yi (q.v.), and is regarded as the artist who passed on their styles to the next generation of painters. He achieved great fame and was particularly highly thought of in Japan.