Lü Ji

Lü Ji, styled Tingzhen and known by the sobriquet Leyu, was a native of Ningbo in Zhejiang province. Sources disagree on his exact birth year, with some giving 1477 and others placing it as early as around 1440; no single date has become the scholarly consensus. He trained first under the court painter Bian Wenjin and later studied with Lin Liang at court, and he is also recorded as having studied Tang and Song era paintings in the collection of Yuan Zhongche.

Lü Ji was summoned to serve as a court painter during the Hongzhi reign, 1488 to 1505, working in the Renzhi Palace and holding the honorary title of Imperial Guard Commissioner.

Lü Ji is understood to have died around 1505, based on the end of his documented court service as recorded by institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria and the China Online Museum. No primary source gives an exact day, month, or place of death, and reference works including Wikipedia state plainly that his precise date of death is unknown.

Lü Ji was recognized in his own time as a leading exponent of Ming court bird-and-flower painting, a status reflected in his standing at the Hongzhi court alongside masters such as Bian Wenjin and Lin Liang. Modern institutional framing continues that judgment: the Tokyo National Museum holds his Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons as a designated Important Cultural Property, and the National Gallery of Victoria treats his work as representative of early Ming academy painting at its most accomplished. No verbatim assessment from a named modern art critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile; institutional and museum scholarship, rather than contemporary press criticism, forms the bulk of his critical record.

Lü Ji's market is small, thin, and dominated by classical Chinese painting sales in Hong Kong. His documented auction record is Cranes on Pine, which sold for HKD 5,750,000 (about USD 744,006) at Christie's Hong Kong in a Chinese Paintings Spring Season sale; Christie's own release does not state an exact sale date, so neither the year nor the day is confirmed here. Other works catalogued only as "attributed to Lu Ji" show far lower results: one realized about USD 146,000 at Sotheby's Hong Kong, while a separate Christie's lot carried only a pre-sale estimate of roughly USD 51,600 to 64,500 with no confirmed realized price, reflecting the market's caution around firm attribution for a Ming court painter without a catalogue raisonne. No sale exceeding this Christie's result has been identified.

There is no catalogue raisonne for Lü Ji, no gallery, and no managed estate, since he was a court painter active more than five centuries ago; verification rests on comparison with firmly documented museum holdings, seals, and inscriptions rather than any certificate program. Auction supply is very limited, and the gap between the Christie's record and lower "attributed to" results shows how much attribution confidence drives price. Even basic biographical facts, including his exact birth year, exact death date, and the precise date of his auction record sale, remain unresolved among reference sources, and collectors should expect the same caution to extend to any individual work's attribution.