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Lot Essay
This painting is a portrait of Lady Gongsun, the greatest dancer in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Lady Gongsun was a frequent performer at the Tang court and was best known for her manipulation of swords and continuous innovation of new sword dances. She is also remembered in folklore for having inspired her contemporaries, poet Du Fu and calligrapher Zhang Xu. It was said that Du Fu's poem Jianqixin was composed based on his memory of watching Lady Gongsun perform a sword dance when he was young. Zhang Xu's invention of his famous wild cursive script also owed much of its inspiration to Lady Gongsun's kinaesthetic and powerful movement in her dance.
In this portrait, Lady Gongsun is holding two swords pointing in opposite directions; her head looks back to reveal only the profile. The light and thin pieces of clothing attached to her robe float freely in the air, implying the light but rapid turns and twists of her body and swords. Ren Yi's realistic depiction of the lady's flesh colour and the hair, face and hands highlights her humanity and perfectly reveals her emotions and movements.
Based in Shanghai in the second half of the 19th century, Ren Yi and fellow artists such as Xu Gu and Wu Changshuo all inherited the literati painting tradition, yet continuously explored new ways to express the aesthetics of cosmopolitan Shanghai, marked by a dynamic and commercial culture. The best of Ren Yi's portraiture, mostly executed between the 1860s and 1870s, embodied his solid foundation of Western sketch drawing with a spin of imagination. He revolutionised the norms of portraiture in Chinese painting, giving weight to the innate human presence of his subjects, sometimes unabashedly simplifying the background. The results are portraits that people find easy to relate to; and in the case of Lady Gongsun Performing a Sword Dance, a historical image that suits the perspective and appreciation of a modern audience.
In this portrait, Lady Gongsun is holding two swords pointing in opposite directions; her head looks back to reveal only the profile. The light and thin pieces of clothing attached to her robe float freely in the air, implying the light but rapid turns and twists of her body and swords. Ren Yi's realistic depiction of the lady's flesh colour and the hair, face and hands highlights her humanity and perfectly reveals her emotions and movements.
Based in Shanghai in the second half of the 19th century, Ren Yi and fellow artists such as Xu Gu and Wu Changshuo all inherited the literati painting tradition, yet continuously explored new ways to express the aesthetics of cosmopolitan Shanghai, marked by a dynamic and commercial culture. The best of Ren Yi's portraiture, mostly executed between the 1860s and 1870s, embodied his solid foundation of Western sketch drawing with a spin of imagination. He revolutionised the norms of portraiture in Chinese painting, giving weight to the innate human presence of his subjects, sometimes unabashedly simplifying the background. The results are portraits that people find easy to relate to; and in the case of Lady Gongsun Performing a Sword Dance, a historical image that suits the perspective and appreciation of a modern audience.