.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The painting depicts an elegant lady adorned in a fur-lined surcoat, surrounded by rich furnishings and accoutrements, suggesting that she is affluent and cultured.
Generally known as shinv hua (portraits of ladies) or meiren hua (portraits of beauties), such paintings have been a favoured theme in Chinese art since the eighth century. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), a growing interest in the depiction of daily life in the palace led to the establishment of a new category of painting that portrayed beautiful women. Images of elegant court ladies engaged in leisure activities were especially popular—the dignified female figures represented in these paintings served not as specific portraits, but rather as pictorialised types that reflected contemporary standards of feminine beauty.
Qing court painting of palace ladies in general, although not always, was the work of anonymous artists, and was mostly executed in the gongbi zhongcai technique (fine line/heavy colours), very much suited to express the detailed refinement of dress, interior and decoration, as illustrated in this lot.
The most prominent feature of the present lot is the remarkable similarity of the composition with one of the renowned Yongzheng’s Screen of Twelve Beauties in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, by anonymous court artists in the late Kangxi period.
The face rendered in realistic style with neat outlines and delicate shading of colour, reminiscent of the painting style of court painter, Leng Mei (ca. 1670-1742), who was trained at the court of the Kangxi Emperor, where European painting techniques were fashionable and were sometimes incorporated into Chinese paintings.
Generally known as shinv hua (portraits of ladies) or meiren hua (portraits of beauties), such paintings have been a favoured theme in Chinese art since the eighth century. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), a growing interest in the depiction of daily life in the palace led to the establishment of a new category of painting that portrayed beautiful women. Images of elegant court ladies engaged in leisure activities were especially popular—the dignified female figures represented in these paintings served not as specific portraits, but rather as pictorialised types that reflected contemporary standards of feminine beauty.
Qing court painting of palace ladies in general, although not always, was the work of anonymous artists, and was mostly executed in the gongbi zhongcai technique (fine line/heavy colours), very much suited to express the detailed refinement of dress, interior and decoration, as illustrated in this lot.
The most prominent feature of the present lot is the remarkable similarity of the composition with one of the renowned Yongzheng’s Screen of Twelve Beauties in the Palace Museum Collection, Beijing, by anonymous court artists in the late Kangxi period.
The face rendered in realistic style with neat outlines and delicate shading of colour, reminiscent of the painting style of court painter, Leng Mei (ca. 1670-1742), who was trained at the court of the Kangxi Emperor, where European painting techniques were fashionable and were sometimes incorporated into Chinese paintings.