清 佚名 官員朝袍端罩像 軸|Portrait of a man in court robes with fur surcoat

Unidentified artist

late 18th–early 19th century · Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

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.

Artist

Unidentified artist

Date

late 18th–early 19th century

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper

Culture

China

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Gift of Dora Wong, 2021