Zhe School (painting)

The Zhe School (浙派) was a school of painters and was part of the Southern School, which thrived during the Ming dynasty. The school was led by Dai Jin, traditionally considered its founder. The "Zhe" of the name refers to Dai Jin's home province - Zhejiang. The school was not a school in the proper sense of the word in that the painters did not formulate a new distinctive style, preferring instead to further the style of the Southern Song, specializing in decorative and large paintings. Instead the school were identified by the formal, academic and conservative outlook, being a revival in the early Ming Dynasty of the Ma-Xia (Ma Yuan 馬遠, Xia Gui 夏珪), 'academic', style of painting landscapes of the Southern Song.

Zhe school, Wade-Giles romanization Che, group of conservative, academic Chinese painters who worked primarily in the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty. These painters specialized in large and decorative paintings that perpetuated the styles and interests of the Southern Song (1127–1279) academy of painting and represent a contrast to the work of scholar-painters of the contemporary Wu school. The name derives from the first character of the name of the province in which the school flourished (Zhejiang) and in which the Southern Song capital, Hangzhou, had been located.