Chijue Daochong

Chijue Daochong served as abbot of Jingde Monastery on Mount Tiantong, a major Chan Buddhist institution, during the Southern Song dynasty. Scholarly discussion of an inscription attributed to him situates his activity around the year 1200, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art dates his calligraphy on the painting "Mending clothes by daylight" to the 1240s. The painting itself is catalogued as by an unidentified artist, with the credit line Purchase, Robert Hatfield Ellsworth Bequest, 2022, and Chijue Daochong's contribution is the poem and calligraphic inscription rather than the image. A separate work, catalogued by the Kyoto National Museum as "Chan (Zen) Calligraphy by Chijue Daochong" and dated to the thirteenth century Southern Song, confirms that calligraphy bearing his name survives as a standalone object as well.

No museum or academic source in the available record gives an exact birth date, death date, or birthplace for him; the Kyoto National Museum, for example, dates its calligraphy attributed to him only to the thirteenth century. Two market sources, the auction database Artprice and a Christie's sale catalogue, independently give conventional dates of 1169 to 1250 for an entry under this name, but this range should still be read as a market convention rather than an academically confirmed fact. No record of his formal education or training survives in any source reviewed for this profile.

The clearest characterization of Chijue Daochong in an accessible major source is the Metropolitan Museum of Art's own description of him as a "prominent Chan abbot" whose poem appears on "Mending clothes by daylight." His inscription is also treated as a subject of scholarly interest in a Duke University Press article in the Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, which discusses his role as abbot of Jingde Monastery in the context of an inscription datable to around 1200. No exhibition history, award, honor, or exact verbatim critical quote naming him could be verified in the sources reviewed for this profile, and none is asserted here.

There is no confirmed public auction sale, price, or record for a work by Chijue Daochong. Artprice lists an entry for "CHIJUE Daochong" noting a small number of works recorded in public auction listings, and a separate database, FindArtInfo, lists one lot with one recorded sale, but neither source makes lot-level price, currency, house, or date information available in a way that could be independently verified for this profile. No gallery, dealer, or estate representation could be documented for him in current or historical art-market sources. His name functions in the market primarily as an inscriber associated with objects that are catalogued and traded under other headings, such as unidentified Song dynasty paintings, rather than as an independent artist with a tracked body of salable work.

Chijue Daochong should be understood as a documented historical inscriber and calligrapher rather than as a market artist with a tracked price history. There is no catalogue raisonne, no certificate-of-authenticity program, and no verified auction record to benchmark against; attribution of any work bearing his name depends on museum curatorial research and on the dated inscriptions themselves. Collectors interested in objects connected to him are, in practice, collecting Song dynasty paintings or calligraphy authenticated and dated by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Kyoto National Museum, and should treat any auction listing under his name with the same caution that applies to any thinly documented historical attribution.