A COURT PORTRAIT OF A LADY QING DYNASTY, 19TH CENTURY

ink and colour on paper, the life-like portrait depicting a distinguished Manchu noble woman wearing two pairs of earrings and a hairpin adorned with peonies, hibiscus and an endless knot panchang, elegantly dressed in a bright purplish-blue robe embroided with shou characters further hemmed with longevity symbols, seated on a rock padded with a cushion below a tall gnarled pine, holding a sprig of pine needles in her right hand, and a cluster of pine cones in the left evoking her numerous offsprings, with a small Pekingese dog at her feet trying to catch her attention, next to a blossoming prunus in the foreground completing the array of longevity symbols, framed and glazed 

There are a few minor tears to the paper along the edges with the largest tear in the pine trees on the upper right corner appoximately 10 cm in length. The pigments are in good condition with no re-painting.
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This portrait was most probably created to celebrate the occasion of the sitter's birthday as the casual pose and outdoor setting indicates that it was not intended to be used as an ancestor portrait. The naturalistically rendered elements of the rocks, trees and patches of grass and its narrative overtone creates a more vivid and lifelike scene. Her long fruitful life is represented through the objects that appear casually placed around her, such as the pine cones to symbolise numerous offspring, the flowering prunus tree to signify her life that has borne through the seasons and the 'five blessings', while the pine tree and shou characters relay the long life she has led and the wish for further years to come. 

Stylistically the painting follows in a Sino-European mode and  is characteristic of the style that was fashionable at the time it was painted. The influence of Western painting is most apparent in the subtle washes that have been used to create the gentle lines and volumetric shadows of age on her face. By contrast, the frontal pose, the consideration of the yin and the yang through carefully balanced areas of the object and the void, and the clothing and auspicious items are firmly rooted in traditional Chinese portrait painting.

See a painting of a man and lady seated in a garden pavilion included in the exhibition Worshipping the Ancestors. Chinese Commemorative Portraits, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., 2001, cat. no. 2.16, where it is noted that similar compositions of figures in outdoor settings were created as a matched pair of scrolls depicting the husband and wife in a garden setting (p. 72).