The "Sage of Painting," summit of Tang-dynasty figure painting
A Tang-dynasty painter, revered by posterity as the "Sage of Painting." His line is famed for its sweeping momentum and elegant motion, the sashes of his figures seeming to flutter in the wind — "Wu’s sashes caught in the wind." He left a great body of murals in the temples of Chang’an and Luoyang, and is said to have painted like a sudden storm, complete in one breath. Though almost no authentic work survives, the tradition he set of shaping form through line ruled Chinese figure painting for a thousand years after.
Wu Daozi painted the drapery of his figures not with elaborate realism but with flowing, soaring long lines, so the robes seem billowed and about to lift on the wind. This "Wu’s sashes caught in the wind" pushed Chinese painting’s pursuit of "conveying spirit through line" to its extreme — within a single line lives a figure’s vital spirit.
Almost no authentic work of Wu Daozi survives; surviving works are mostly later copies, and his style is known chiefly through treatises and traced copies, which this site states.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.