(b 1577; d c. 1652). Chinese painter. He worked in the Suzhou area of Jiangsu Province, painting mainly landscapes, with occasional figure and animal studies, notably of water buffalo. Many of his landscape paintings are topographical in character, depicting actual places; for instance, he travelled in eastern Zhejiang Province during spring 1639 and on his return painted an album of views of the region. In contrast to other Suzhou artists, Zhang did not use established compositional conventions and type-forms or the manner of some earlier master; instead he portrayed the scenes more as they appeared, adapting his representational means flexibly to the appearance of the scenery. This approach was not typical of his time, and his images were labelled strange and unusual.
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