Xu You

Public sources identify an artist catalogued by the auction market research service Artprice as "You Xu," with a recorded birth year of 1674 and no confirmed year of death. Given a birth year of 1674, the artist cannot be living today, though no exact death date has been located in any source checked, and neither the birth year nor the underlying Artprice listing could be corroborated by a second independent source. Beyond that single data point, no schooling, training, gallery representation, or museum holding could be verified in the sources reviewed for this profile. Artprice's listing places the artist's auction activity within the drawing and watercolor category, consistent with traditional Chinese brush painting, though the specific medium, region of activity, and a fuller biographical narrative are not documented in accessible sources.

The name Xu You is shared by several unrelated historical figures who should not be confused with the market artist described here. One is a Southern Tang dynasty court official and artist, born around 960 in Haizhou, China, whose death date is not recorded in accessible sources. A separate, and separately documented, Xu You served as an adviser to the warlords Yuan Shao and then Cao Cao in the late Eastern Han dynasty and was executed on Cao Cao's order in 204 CE. Another is a legendary recluse figure, also rendered Xu You, said in classical sources to have lived before 2200 BCE, a mythic rather than historical figure. A separate late 17th century Korean painting held by the Harvard Art Museums depicts a historical Xu You as its subject, painted by the artist Chong Yuseung, but that Xu You is the subject of the work rather than its maker. None of these figures can be linked to the auction market Xu You profiled here without further documentation.

No named critical essays, museum reviews, or exhibition history for this artist could be located in the sources reviewed. The documented public record is limited to the single-source auction market listing described above. No institutional or curatorial commentary on the artist's work was found.

The highest documented auction price for a work catalogued under the name Xu You is for a painting titled Landscape, which sold for the equivalent of USD 17,424, including buyer's premium, at China Guardian Auctions in Beijing on December 19, 2011, per Artprice. Artprice records ten total auction appearances for this artist, concentrated in the drawing and watercolor category. This listing is the sole source located for this artist's market activity; it could not be corroborated in other auction-record databases reviewed for this profile, and no higher priced or more recent sale could be confirmed as of this profile's data date. The market under this name, to the extent it can be documented at all, is thin, sporadic, and limited to a single source pointing to Chinese domestic auction houses.

Given the thin and largely uncorroborated documentation, provenance and cataloguing at the point of sale carry unusual weight for any work offered under the name Xu You. There is no catalogue raisonne, certificate of authentication program, or confirmed museum holding to cross reference, and the name is shared by at least three unrelated historical figures from earlier centuries. Buyers should treat any attribution with care and confirm identity details directly with the selling auction house rather than relying on this profile as a substitute for direct research.