Guan Daosheng

Guan Daosheng (Chinese: 管道昇; Wade–Giles: Kuan Tao-sheng; 1262–1319) was a Chinese poet and painter who was active during the early Yuan Dynasty. She is credited with being "the most famous female painter in Chinese history...remembered not only as a talented woman, but also as a prominent figure in the history of bamboo painting."

She was born in Huzhou and was the wife of Zhao Mengfu, a renowned scholar-official and artist often considered the greatest artist of the earlier Yuan period. Likely a descendant of the high-ranking Wu Xing official Guan Zhong, she was well-educated in her youth, where she grew up on her family's ancestral lands, nicknamed "The Roost of the Esteemed."

Guan and Zhao were married in 1286 and established a home in Wuxing "with the purchase of a town house with gardens in Huzhou, and a country retreat at Dongheng village near Deqing," where they were later buried. While married to Zhao, Guan gave birth to two sons and two daughters, who she raised alongside the one son and four daughters Zhao had with his previous wife, who died prior to his marriage to Guan. Because of Zhao's important position within the Yuan bureaucratic hierarchy, Guan was able to accompany him on long trips around the nation, a luxury most citizens, especially women, would not have enjoyed. She especially often joined him on trips between the northern capital at Dadu and the southern cultural center of Huangzhou. In the year of their marriage, they embarked on a three-year trip from their home in Wuxing to Dadu.

Both Guan Daosheng and her prominent husband Zhao Mengfu "harboured deep Chan Buddhist faith and enjoyed friendship with monks, such as their teacher Zhongfeng Mingben and others residing in the monasteries on the Tianmu Mountains, close to their homes in Wuxing and Deqing in northern Zhejiang...." All in all, she and her husband had six daughters and three sons.

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