CHINESE PORTRAITURE PROFESSIONAL
CHINESE PORTRAITURE SERIES

Portrait Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368вЂ“1912) has received generous support from The Robert H. 1623) from the collection of the GemГ¤ldegalerie appears next to a Chinese portrait of similarly large dimensions and from the same time, depicting a male ancestor.ДЄn exhibition organized by the Museum fГјr Asiatische Kunst вЂ“ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Palace Museum Beijing, in cooperation with the Royal Ontario Museum TorontoДЄn extensive catalogue, published by Imhof Verlag, will accompany the exhibition.ДЇaces of China. So Anthony van DyckвЂ™s Portrait of a Genovese Lady (ca. In addition, the exhibition deliberately highlights transcultural relationships to European portraiture by placing the Chinese portraits alongside a handful of European masterworks from the same time. Also included in this collection are handbooks for portrait painters with woodcut illustrations, such as Ding GaoвЂ™s Secret Workshop Traditions of Portrait Painting, which not only gives details on technique, but also explores scientific approaches to the art of portraiture, such as physiognomy.

CHINESE PORTRAITURE SERIES

Further objects on display come from the extensive Chinese collections of the Staatliche MuseenвЂ™s own Ethnologisches Museum and Museum fГјr Asiatische Kunst.ДЄ collection of 365 preparatory studies for ancestral portraits that have never gone on display before, along with a series of presentation pieces in album form that artists showed potential clients as a way of sampling their wares, offers insight into workshop practices of the time. The ancestor portraits-loans from the Royal Ontario Museum Toronto-are placed alongside an altar table with a censer, candlesticks, and flower vases, intended for honoring deceased relatives. Thus, large-scale imperial portraits are surrounded by imperial silk garments once worn in the Palace-both groups of objects are on loan from the Palace Museum Beijing. The works are placed in carefully chosen relationships in light of their original social and religious contexts, as well as their circumstances of production. Contexts of the Portraits - Clothes, Technique, Europe While the upper exhibition hall is dedicated to portraits of princely figures, officials, and artists, the focus in the galleries on the lower exhibition hall is on private individuals, families, and ancestral portraits. However, Faces of China is deliberately dedicated to both of these two traditions, as developments in one always informed developments in the other. In exhibitions on Chinese portrait painting to date, only one of these traditions of representation has always been the central theme. On the other hand, there are portraits signed by often famous artists depicting well-known figures, such as officials, artists, poets, or those in the military, along with ordinary citizens shown in both single and group family portraits.

CHINESE PORTRAITURE PROFESSIONAL

Most were painted by professional but anonymous artists and are unsigned. Ancestor portraits were created to honor deceased family members, who were venerated as part of religious observance within the family. Potrait traditions - The Livinig and the DeadД¬hinese portrait painting is characterized by two traditions of representation: images of ancestors and images of living figures. The Jesuit painter Giuseppe Castiglione (Chinese name: Lang Shining Milan 1688 вЂ“Beijing 1766) is a key figure of this period. This is particularly well reflected in the portrait paintings. After the Manchu people conquered China in 1644 and established the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court in Beijing was host to a lively cultural exchange between China and Europe. It was in this period that Italian Jesuit painters visited the country, such as Matteo Ricci, who brought new techniques of European portrait painting with him in 1583. Beginning in the middle of 16th century, the late Ming Dynasty brought with it an economic boom and great intellectual openness that spurred a significant moment of florescence. Portrait painting has a 2000-year-old tradition in China. These portraits evidence a blossoming of the genre that had never been seen before. The main focus is on the unique portraits of the Qing Dynasty (1644вЂ“1912), including images of members of the imperial court, ancestors, military figures, and informal portraits of artists and famous women. A selection of more than 100 paintings from the collections of the Palace Museum Beijing and the Royal Ontario Museum Toronto, most of which have never been shown in Europe, spans a period of more than 500 years. Faces of China is the first exhibition explicitly dedicated to Chinese portrait painting.

Chinese portraiture