Creator

Preview

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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

2020.84

Provenance

Purchased by David P. Harris from Gump's in San Francisco in 1973 with 2020.83.

Description

The painting depicts a figure of the Miao ethnic minority in profile, clothed in a blue hood and boots, looking upward and holding what could be a wooden flute to his mouth.

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.

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