Why Chinese portrait painting wasn't only for the powerful
Tina Hüttl db
October 12, 2017
Emperors, literary figures or simple villagers: Chinese portrait painters depicted people from all walks of life. Artworks spanning five centuries are now on display in Europe for the first time.
Portrait painting has a 2000-year-old tradition in China. A Berlin exhibition features magnificent paintings from the Ming and Qing Dynasties spanning over five centuries, from 1368 to 1912.
Image: The Palace Museum/Foto:Yu Ningchuan
A twinkle in the eye
This portrait depicts Dawaci, a regional rival of the Qianlong Emperor in the mid-18th century. After capturing Dawaci, the emperor arranged the western Mongolian warrior's marriage to a princess in 1756, the same year an unknown artist created the above painting. The visual details, including tiny dots of white in Dawaci's eyes, highlight the influence of Western techniques in the Qing court.
Image: Ethnologisches Museum – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/Waltraut Schneider-Schütz
A historic civil servant
This portrait of public servant Yang Maolin is typical of the early Ming Dynasty. It is estimated to date from the 16th century or early 17th century. The style and the color of the man's clothes indicate that he was an official of a lower rank. His smooth, young face is painted in a relatively flat style, which was typical for paintings of that period.
Image: ROM/Foto: B. Boyle/MPA/FPPO
A rank marked by red
This portrait of Yang Woxing, one of Yang Maolin's relatives, was painted during the same period. Also a state official, Yang Woxing's red clothes and the decorative elements embroidered with gold show off his rank in the public service hierarchy. Another typical element in this painting is the imported Ningxia rug. Portrait subjects would often pose on such a rug.
Image: ROM/Foto: B. Boyle/MPA/FPPO
China's most powerful woman
As the mother of the first ruler of the Qing Dynasty, the Shunzhi Emperor who ruled from 1644-1661, Dowager Empress Xiaozhuangwen was the most powerful and highly esteemed woman of the imperial court at the time. She is portrayed here as a dignified older woman. Even though the portrait frames her in close-up, her pose gives an impression of distance.
Image: The Palace Museum/Foto:Yu Ningchuan
A ruler's glory
This portrait of the Tianqi Emperor was probably painted in the imperial court's studios. The emperor ascended to the throne at the age of 15 in 1620 and died only seven years later from a severe illness. The portraits of rulers from that period had a double function: They served as ritual objects to be venerated and as a strategic way to establish political power.
Image: The Palace Museum/Foto: Yu Ningchuan
Deer and cranes for luck
This depiction of a noble couple was created under the Qing Dynasty between the 18th and 19th centuries. The man and woman in traditional costume have formal poses. Unlike other typical ancestor portraits, this painting includes the couple's surroundings. The deer and cranes at the bottom of the image symbolize luck and longevity in Chinese culture.
Image: ROM/Foto: B. Boyle/MPA/FPPO
Father and son
Paintings of officials in the imperial court had become increasingly popular from the 16th century onward. This one, painted by Wu Zhuo in 1790, shows the highly-ranked scholar Weng Fanggang with his son in front of an elaborate building. The son may have been taller than his father, but by making him smaller, the artist indicated his lower social status in comparison to that of his father's.
Image: ROM/Foto: B. Boyle/MPA/FPPO
Group portrait with ancestors
This 19th century painting depicts 15 ancestors from five generations. The oldest individual sits at the top with his two wives on either side. This portrayal of a group is believed to have been prepared on the basis of earlier individual portraits, creating one harmonious picture for ancestral worship, instead of many different ones.
Image: Rheinisches Bildarchiv/S. Walz
Self-portrait of an artist
Self-portraits were not a rarity in China, but this one, believed to be from 1856, is seen as the most exceptional one among classical Chinese art. Painted by Ren Xiong, a central figure of Shanghai's art scene, he challenged conventions by forgoing the garden scenery that was typical at the time. The artist died from tuberculosis in 1857 at the age of 34.
Image: The Palace Museum/Foto: Yu Ningchuan
Female painters
Many women were also painters in China. This depiction of the artist Cao Zhenxiu is not a self-portrait. Instead, she hired a colleague for the work, later putting the finishing touches on it herself by adding bamboo and a crane. The exhibition "Faces of China — Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368–1912)" is on show at Berlin's Kulturforum until January 2, 2018.
Image: The Palace Museum, Foto: Yu Ningchuan
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"Faces of China. Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1912)" is the first exhibition in Europe to focus on Chinese portrait painting; most of the more than 100 exhibits are on display for the first time on the continent.
The curator of the exhibition, Klaas Ruitenbeek, became director of Berlin's Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Museum for Asian Art) in 2010. He spent four years preparing the show in cooperation with the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
DW met him to discuss the traditional art of Chinese portrait painting.
DW: You once said that preparing an exhibition in a museum compares to telling stories. What are the stories revealed by Chinese portrait painting?
Klaas Ruitenbeek: I've always been fascinated by the fact that half of the paintings created in China were traditionally not recognized as art. They were not exhibited or collected — they were meant for one's family. They were the portraits of parents and grandparents created to be worshiped through rituals, year after year on holidays.
Mainly, these are the stories of regular citizens from all parts of society, real portraits of real people, including the faces of villagers who lived 600 years ago. Of course, the exhibition also includes imperial portraits and paintings of writers, artists and famous women.
Dutch art historian Klaas Ruitenbeek heads Berlin's Asian Art MuseumImage: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/D. von Becker
Who commissioned these portraits? And what led regular citizens to have their portrait done, too?
Families would want for example their grandmother to be painted because she was old and might not live much longer. In China, it's important to have a portrait of your parents and grandparents. Your family is part of your identity to a much greater degree than is the case here.
The second important category of portraits we show in the exhibition are informal portraits of senior officials and literary figures who commissioned paintings, as well as self-portraits painted by the artists themselves.
Did the painters have names, were they cult figures like some were in Europe? The caption underneath some of the paintings reads: unknown artist.
Every Chinese person has a name, every beggar, orphan and painter. The names were known: People would go to Liu the painter and ask him to paint their grandfather, Wang. He would come to their house, make a sketch, and return to his workshop to paint a formal painting, complete with a beautiful robe. The names have been lost, but back then, everyone knew them.
There are no anonymous portraits in China or in Europe; the difference between Chinese and European painting is that paintings, in particular those of ancestors, were not signed.
The exhibition of paintings from the collections of the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto spans more than 500 years. The early portraits have small, flat faces, a style that changes over the years. Is that due to a European influence?
Chinese portraits of writers, artists and the educated upper classes usually show the entire body, with a rather smaller face. Classic European portrait painting — we have a van Dyck on display to show the difference — focuses on the upper body, the face is almost life-size and the background is uniform. But every culture is open to interaction.
Many of the works are on loan from the Palace Museum in Beijing. How did that cooperation go?
It was great. Of course, we've long had personal and scientific contacts with the curators there. And not only did they promise us almost all of the masterworks we wanted to have, they also gave me free reign to arrange the exhibition. I was able to make last minute changes, and such trust is not necessarily a given. They also waived lending fees. Instead, we agreed that in about three years' time, a major exhibition from Berlin's Staatliche Museen will be headed to the Palace Museum.
The exhibition "Faces of China. Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1912)" is open through January 7, 2018 at the Berliner Kulturforum.
