Preview
Creation Date
1920s–1940s, Republican Era China
Geography
China
Culture
Chinese
Miao
Medium
Ink and color on silk
Dimensions
With frame: 18 1/2 × 12 11/16 × 13/16 in. (47 × 32.3 × 2.1 cm)
Credit Line
Bequest of David P. Harris ('46), 2020
Accession Number
2020.83
Provenance
Purchased by David P. Harris from Gump's in San Francisco in 1973 with 2020.84.
Description
The painting depicts a woman of the Miao ethnic minority from the back, barefoot, and clothed in blue. In one hand the figure carries a hoe while the other guides an ox.
Likely a copy from the Qing dynasty's paintings of tributaries. See scroll 4 of Xie Sui's Qing Imperial Illustrations of Tributaries in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. (URL: https://digitalarchive.npm.gov.tw/Painting/Content?pid=1619&Dept=P)
For more on paintings of Miao ethnic minorities in Qing and Republican China, see:
Hostetler, Laura. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Zhu, Jing. Visualising Ethnicity in the Southwest Borderlands: Gender and Representation in Late Imperial and Republican China. Leiden: Brill, 2020.