Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat
This portrait depicts a middle-aged man in court robes topped by a sumptuous fur coat. Building on both Chinese and European precedents, the artist shaded the face to suggest three-dimensional volume; the glistening white dot in the eye, suggesting moistness, is a purely European convention adopted by the artist during a time when images from abroad were becoming more widely available in China. The man sits before a screen painted with a floral rebus, or multipart visual pun: magnolia (yulan 玉蘭), crab apple (haitang 海棠), and peony (nicknamed fugui 富貴) combine to mean “fortune in the jade hall” (yutang fugui 玉堂富貴), a wish for riches and honor. With such an auspicious background, this portrait was likely made for a milestone birthday; after the death of the sitter, it could have been repurposed for veneration in the ancestral shrine.
Artwork Details
- 清 佚名 官員朝袍端罩像 軸
- Title: Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat
- Artist: Unidentified artist (Chinese, late 18th–19th century)
- Period: Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
- Date: late 18th–early 19th century
- Culture: China
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions: Image: 76 3/4 × 39 in. (194.9 × 99.1 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Gift of Dora Wong, 2021
- Object Number: 2021.324
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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