Flowers in the mirror : Chinese women's self-portraits (1600-1900) = 鏡中花 : 明清女性自畫像

Abstract

This thesis examines women’s self-portraits in late imperial China. In the prevalence of individuality in the late Ming dynasty, portraiture thrived again and self-portraiture, in particular, became a popular media for literati’s self-expression. With the publication of The Peony Pavilion, the plot and illustration of the heroine Du Liniang portraying herself in scene 14 “The Portraiture” spread in a wide range, which draws forth questions about women’s self-portraiture in real life. Depressed by the haggard mirror reflection, Du Liniang painted a younger version of herself as a memento, which is called “true portraiture” in Chinese but is indeed a false image deriving from Du’s imagination. The discrepancy between the mirror image and the portrait also lies in works of women artists in Ming and Qing dynasties. Observing their mirror reflection, these women generated misrecognition of the self, alienating from the roles of symbolic order and entering the imaginary order. Based on their time and identities, these women artists are categorized into three groups: courtesans in the late Ming (ca. 1573-1644), professional artists in the late Ming and early Qing (ca. 1600-1683) and gentry women in High Qing (ca. 1683-1839). By analyzing their extant self-portraits and relevant written records, we discover that the women artists were confined to the aesthetic norms set by men, therefore their works did not look much distinctive from the beauty paintings. However, by following and mildly distorting the painting conventions, they concealed in the self-portraits the artistic vocabularies for their own voice on emotions and ambitions. They altogether depicted an art history of women who struggles for identities and recognitions in the last three centuries of traditional patriarchal society in China.