Why Yeping Ying matters
Yeping Ying, more often catalogued in museum records under the Chinese name order Ying Yeping, is a twentieth-century Chinese ink painter and calligrapher whose work sits in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He matters less as an auction-market name today and more as an example of a mid-century Chinese painter whose institutional standing is documented while his public sale history is not. For collectors, he is a useful case study in how thin, sometimes contradictory public data requires extra care before any purchase.
- Nationality
- Chinese
- Media
- Ink painting, Calligraphy, Seal carving
- Movement
- Traditional Chinese ink painting (guohua)
- Education
- No formal art school or degree is documented. A single secondary source states he was taught at home and began specializing in nature painting at age sixteen.
- Signature motifs
- Landscape (shanshui) painting, Flower-and-bird painting
By the numbers
- 1910 to 1990LifespanBorn in Ninghai, Zhejiang Province, China
- 1 confirmedMuseum collectionsMetropolitan Museum of Art
- Ink and color painting, calligraphy, seal carvingPracticeLandscape and flower-and-bird subjects
- Not publicly documentedAuction recordNo verified auction result located as of 2026-07-16
Selected works
Click any work to view it full screen.
Biography
Yeping Ying, also recorded as Ying Yeping (應野平), was born in 1910 in Ninghai, Zhejiang Province, China. A single secondary source states that he was taught at home rather than at a formal art academy and began specializing in nature painting around age sixteen; no institution, degree, or year of formal study could be verified in other sources, so this should be read as a preliminary account rather than a confirmed education record.
He worked primarily in ink and color, producing landscape and flower-and-bird paintings, and was also known for calligraphy and seal carving. A secondary biographical source states that he became a professional painter in 1949 and later joined the Chinese Artists Association and the Chinese Calligraphers Association, though this account has not been independently corroborated by a second source and is presented here with that caveat.
He died in 1990. No obituary, gallery statement, or institutional record located in current research gives an exact death date or place, so those details are left unspecified rather than estimated.
Critical reception
Published critical commentary on Yeping Ying is limited. A general biographical source describes his work favorably and states broadly that he won unspecified awards for his artistic achievement, but no named critic, outlet, specific award title, or date could be verified to support either claim with confidence. What is verifiable is institutional: the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a landscape fan painting dated 1942. This acquisition is the clearest evidence of institutional regard for his work.
Market
No publicly documented auction sale for Yeping Ying could be located as of 2026-07-16. Artprice maintains an artist profile page under the name Yeping Ying, confirming that the market recognizes him as a distinct auction-market identity, but the public page does not display hammer prices, lot details, or a record sale. In the absence of a verified sale, no auction high, price trend, or ranking can be responsibly stated.
Museum collections
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Authentication and provenance
No catalogue raisonne.
No catalogue raisonne has been identified for this artist, and no certificate-of-authenticity program is documented. Institutional verification currently rests on museum accession records rather than a dedicated authentication body.
Primary reference: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/36400
What collectors should know
Public information on Yeping Ying is unusually thin for a museum-collected painter. There is no catalogue raisonne, no confirmed current gallery or estate representation, and no verified auction record, so provenance and attribution should be checked directly against museum accession precedents rather than assumed from market comparables. Buyers should also be alert to name-order confusion: the same painter appears in Western-ordered auction listings as Yeping Ying and in Chinese-ordered museum and biographical records as Ying Yeping, and neither name should be confused with unrelated contemporary artists who share part of the name, such as Miao Ying or Ming Ying.
Further reading and resources
Data current as of 2026-07-16.
