Mao Qiling

Mao Qiling was born on October 25, 1623 (per Hummel's Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period; most general references give only the year 1623) in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang, China. He qualified as a licentiate, or shengyuan, in the imperial examination system at around age fifteen, roughly 1638, and went on to become one of the wide-ranging scholars of the early Qing period, writing on the Chinese Classics, phonetics, music, history, and geography. His collected works are known as the Xihe heji.

In 1679 he passed a special metropolitan honorary examination, the boxue hongci, convened by the Kangxi Emperor to recruit eminent scholars who had not yet formally served the new Qing court. On the strength of that result he was appointed examining editor at the Hanlin Academy, the empire's highest scholarly institution, and in 1685 he served as an examining official for the metropolitan civil service examination.

Beyond his scholarship, Mao Qiling is also credited with at least one surviving painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a work titled Lone Fisherman on a Boat, attributed to him and described by the museum as depicting the fisherman-hermit theme common in literati painting, rendered in broad, wet ink washes. The work is held on loan and is not currently on view. He died in 1716; the exact day, month, and place of death are not documented in the sources reviewed for this profile.

Critical and reference literature on Mao Qiling addresses him almost entirely as a scholar and philologist rather than as a painter. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's own catalog language identifies him first as "a prominent scholar of the early Qing period" and treats the attributed painting as a secondary facet of a broader intellectual career. No dedicated art-critical assessment or exact quotation about his painting from a named critic in a major outlet could be located in the sources reviewed.

As of 2026-07-13, the only confirmed public auction result identified for Mao Qiling is a work titled Running Script Calligraphy, sold by Heffel for CAD 8,750, inclusive of premium, on October 30, 2025, as part of an estate sale of Chinese paintings and works on paper. No comprehensive commercial auction database (Artprice, Artnet, or equivalent) was fully accessible for this research, so this single result should not be read as a confirmed all-time high; additional unindexed sales at regional or historical Chinese auction houses may exist. No current gallery or estate representation, and no exhibition history for his work, could be confirmed. Readers should note that searches on the name "Mao" surface large volumes of unrelated market activity, most prominently Andy Warhol's Mao portrait series and Mao Zedong-related memorabilia and portraiture, none of which has any connection to Mao Qiling the early Qing scholar-painter. A separate, contemporary painter who is sometimes also romanized as Mao Qiling and has been represented by Osborne Studio Gallery in London is likewise a distinct, unrelated individual.

Mao Qiling has, in effect, no active art market. The only confirmed public sale identified is a modest 2025 result for a calligraphy work at Heffel; the one securely documented painting associated with his name sits in a museum collection rather than in private or auction circulation, and no catalogue raisonne, certification body, or comprehensive reference sale history exists to support attribution of any other work that might be offered under his name. Anyone encountering a painting attributed to "Mao Qiling" for sale should treat provenance and attribution with particular caution given this thin market and the absence of an established authentication framework, and should take care not to conflate this historical figure with the wholly unrelated market for Andy Warhol's Mao paintings, Mao Zedong-related art and ephemera, or the distinct contemporary painter of the same romanized name represented by Osborne Studio Gallery.