PAINTING OF LADY AND CHILDREN QING DYNASTY, FIRST HALF OF 18TH CENTURY

ink and colour on silk, depicting a lady tuning a pipa, overlooking two children, one playing with a dog, the other with a cage of birds overlooked by a hawk, mounted, with one collector's seal partially visible to the lower right corner

There are general stains, tears and wear to the painted surface and mounts. There is a 18.2cm horizontal tear across the headdress of the lady, and a 2cm vertical tear near it. Other long tears are visible, such as that across the shoulder and waist of the lady (possibly due to previous rolling of the painting). The painted surface has other crease lines and loose threads, with associated losses and overpaint. Areas of loss are visible in areas such as the ribbon held on one of the children's hands, and just above the head of another child. There are stains along the sleeve band and on the lower left corner. There is minor colour fading.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Please note this painting will be sold without a frame.

A Qing Court-Style Painting

An elegant and beautiful woman sits on the floor with her two children. The man of the family away, they are all left to their own thoughts and activities. Where his father has gone is suggested by the pastime of the little boy in the lower right. Holding a basket over a flock of small birds, he eyes his pet hawk, no doubt imagining himself out on a hunting expedition with male relatives, friends and retainers. The other child, seated under his mother's skirts, teases his growling little dog, holding its back while dangling before it the jewelled brocade tassel that hangs from his mother's waist. For her part, the exquisitely dressed lady is tuning the strings she has just bent onto her instrument, a Chinese pipa lute. A silver box containing rolls of spare strings lies open on the floor beside her.

                This genre scene calls to mind the much-loved yet harrowing story of the Western Han (206 BC-8 AD) court lady Wang Zhaojun, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China. An upright character, after entering the harem of Han emperor Yuan in 36 BC, unlike her many peers, she had apparently baulked at bribing the court portraitist Mao Yanshou, who prepared albums of new arrivals for the emperor and may have recorded an unflattering portrait of her. In any event, Wang had never come to the attention of the emperor. In 33 BC, the Xiongnu nomad chieftain Huhanye visited the Han capital to take an imperial daughter as a wife, part of the policy of heqin intermarriage between royal families instituted to stabilize an uneasy peace. The Han princesses declined but Wang volunteered and emperor, having seen her portrait, condescended to agree. When Wang appeared in person, the portraitist's deception was exposed but it was too late. Wang Zhaojun left China to become a wife to the Xiongnu chieftain and Mao Yanshou was executed. This inauspicious start to the history of painting in China was only made worse by the legend that Wang's beauty caused geese flying over her on her journey north across the steppe to forget to flap their wings and fall to the ground.

                Various activities and attributes came to symbolize Wang Zhaojun's new life among China's northern 'barbarians', which are seen in this painting. She has borne her husband two children but, beyond their Chinese mother, these little boys have little connection with China. They live in a nomad ger (Russian yurt, Chinese bao) and aspire to be great hunters and warriors like their father. These figures wear a blend of Chinese and exotic (from a Chinese perspective) clothing and accessories, such as fur hats against the cold and peacock feathers denoting rank. The righteous Wang Zhaojun occasionally consoles herself with memories of China by playing tunes on her Chinese instrument, the pipa.

                After Huhanye died in 31 BC, Wang's request to return to China had been declined by the new emperor Cheng (r. 33-7 BC) and so by the nomad levirate custom she was married to the next chieftain, for whom she bore further children. It was said that due to her, political relations with Han China's northern neighbours were stabilized for half a century, hence the Chinese honour bestowed upon her as the 'consort who pacified the barbarians' (Ninghu yanzhi). The popular tale of Wang Zhaojun remained relevant in debates about China's often-fraught relations with neighbours under periods of native rule, but also during the equally long periods of non-Chinese rule over parts or the whole of China. The story speaks to us about each of these moments at which it was reiterated or reprised, as here, in a fine court-style painting from the early to middle Qing dynasty (1644-1911), a long period of Manchu rule.

                The study of this genre of meiren hua (paintings of beauties) in the Qing dynasty has been greatly enhanced in recent years by the late James Cahill (1926-2014), notably in the 2013 exhibition, Beauty Revealed, in Berkeley CA.[1] Many paintings of this type show a fine lady displaying her particular accomplishment. A hanging scroll painting in the British Museum attributed to one of the leading painters of meiren, Leng Mei, shows a lady dressed in diaphanous robes seated at a root-wood desk resting from reading (Beauty Revealed, cat no. 7). An anonymous painting in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, shows a lady dressed in many-layered robes of richly decorated fabrics admiring herself in a mirror (Beauty Revealed, cat no. 21). In the present scroll, it is the lady's musicianship and fashion-sense that are highlighted as cues to her accomplishments and charms.

                In most of these paintings, the woman is usually quite alone (not counting pets, servants or children), as if awaiting a male lover who has spurned her talents and beauty. This painting adds another layer of interest: Although 'peace through intermarriage' or heqin had kept the peace in Wang Zhaojun's time, the Chinese emperors of Ming (1368-1644) China regarded such a policy with abhorrence. For their part, the Manchu rulers of Qing China forbad intermarriage between the ruling Manchu minority and Chinese subjects. This did not, however, prevent Prince Yinzhen, the future Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723-35), from having made for his own personal delight a well-known set of twelve paintings, discovered not long ago in the Palace Museum in Beijing, depicting Chinese beauties at leisure in finely appointed settings, each as if awaiting the arrival of her absent lover, the Manchu prince.[2] In a sense it is the illicit nature of such interracial liaisons, seen in those paintings as in this one, which would have given all these images an intense visual charge.

[1]James Cahill et al., Beauty Revealed: Images of Women in Qing Dynasty Chinese Paintings, exh. cat., (Berkeley CA: University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2013).

[2]See, e.g., Evelyn S. Rawski and Jessica Rawson, eds, China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005), no. 173.