River landscape with scholar in a boat

Zhou Chen was a professional painter who lived and worked in Suzhou during the time of Wen Zhengming. Little is known about Zhou’s life—unlike the scholar Wen and his friends, professional artists like Zhou did not publish autobiographical writings, and little was written about them—but paintings like this one reveal an extremely assured hand that combines the polished atmospherics of court painting with a gentle touch that might have appealed to scholars of the day. Zhou’s influence on the Suzhou painting scene was expanded through his students Tang Yin and Qiu Ying, both of whom mixed with the circle of Wen Zhengming.