Which Chinese art movement is associated with scholar-amateur painters such as Dong Qichang?

Literati painting is the Chinese art movement associated with scholar-amateur painters such as Dong Qichang.

The literati, or scholar-officials, valued painting as a form of self-cultivation and personal expression rather than only as professional image-making. Their work often includes landscapes, plants, calligraphy, poems, and inscriptions, allowing several arts to appear together on one surface.

Dong Qichang, a painter and influential art theorist of the late Ming dynasty, helped organize Chinese painting history into contrasting Northern and Southern schools. His classification was influential, although modern scholars do not treat it as a neutral account of every artist or regional tradition.

Literati painting does not mean that every painter was literally an amateur or that technique was unimportant. Artists such as Dong Qichang studied earlier masters closely and used controlled brushwork, while presenting originality, learning, and cultivated taste as central artistic values.