Ancestral Portrait, Male / Artist Unknown, China

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About this Item

Record Details

Accession Number
2002/1.218.1
Title
Ancestral Portrait, Male
Artist Nationality
Chinese
Medium and Support
ink, color and gold on paper
Object Creation Date
circa 1875-1920
Object Creation Place
Asia (continent)
China (nation)
Creation Place 1
Asia (continent)
Creation Place 2
China (nation)
Dimensions
117.3 cm x 56.4 cm (46 3/16 in. x 22 3/16 in.)
Primary Object Classification
Painting
Primary Object Type
hanging scroll
Secondary Object Classification
Painting
Secondary Object Type
figure painting
Physical Description
This late Qing portrait depicts an official in his formal court costume.
Subject Matter
Formal male (and female) court dress was worn with a piling (wide collar or capelet) over the shoulders. The costume also included a hat with decorations denoting rank and a looped court necklace. Though these necklaces always had the same number of beads (108), those with larger diameters resulted in a longer chain, such as the one worn by the official in this painting. This style was common in the late Qing period. The figure’s blue winter surcoat has an insignia badge with a Mandarin duck surrounded by clouds; this suggests he is a seventh-rank civil official (there were nine ranks in the civil official or wenguan hierarchy in the Qing court). Traditionally, as here, Ming (1368–1644) and Qing dynasty ancestral portrait paintings emphasized verisimilitude in the depiction of faces because they were treated as objects of worship rather than art. The receding ground plane, use of oblique lines in the top section of the tapestry, and three-dimensional presence of the body in this painting, however, suggest there is also a Western influence.
Primary Keywords
costume
figures
males
portraits
Rights
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Technical Details

Image Size
1282 x 2844
File Size
485 KB
Record
2002/1.218.1
Link to this Item
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-2002-sl-1.218.1/2002_1.218.1.jpg

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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/i/image/api/manifest/musart:2002-SL-1.218.1:2002_1.218.1.JPG

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Full citation
"Ancestral Portrait, Male; Artist Unknown, China." In the digital collection University of Michigan Museum of Art. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-2002-sl-1.218.1/2002_1.218.1.jpg. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 28, 2024.
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