Satire and Situation

Images oftheArtistinLate NineteenthCentury China
RICHARD VINOGRAD

The photograph of a Hong Kong Artist at Work (figure 1) made sometime between 1868 and 1872 by the Englishman John Thomson offers
a documentary glimpse of the role of the artist and of some of the
conditions of artistic production within the later nineteenth-century
Chinese cultural horizo ri. There is information within the frame,
and also this side of the lens, in the circumstances of the photographic project. The painter is a kind of portraitist-by-proxy himself, specializing in individual and group portraits, along with harbor scenes,
and probably working from photographs to produce oil paintings.
There are thus several levels of transposition and substitution implicated in the image, from photograph to painting in the case of the
artist displayed at work, and back to photograph through the proxy
of the camera in the case of the seemingly objective and effortless
photographic print: the artist representing, represented artlessly.
The seeming candor and artlessness of the photograph are of
course open to question. The photograph seems to dispense with
the standard apparatus of artistic image construction, part cultural
and literary stereotype, part iconographic convention, in favor of an
immediate glimpse of the artist's labor, thoroughly deromanticized.
In fact, the photograph is the product of complex processes and situations. The project of which this image forms a part can be variously
construed as documentary, ethnographic, or touristic, and the situation might be candid or staged.The photograph seems to aim not at
an explicit portrait but at something more like a register of professional technique, and the implication of a depersonalized record
mirrors the activity of the painter at work, distanced from the ordinary relational encounters of portraitist and portrait subject. The status of the subject as specimen has some implications for the claimed
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SATIRE AND SI1UATION

Figure 1. John Thomson (1837-1921), Hong-Kong Artist atWork.

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ART AT THE CLOSE OF C H I NA'S EM PI RE

status of the (unseen) photographer as privileged observer.Whereas
the photographer sees, and represents, seemingly effortlessly and
comprehensively, the painter labors at a particular replication .There
are implications, respective ly,of autonomy and subservience, part
technologically based and part culturally determined.
Although Thomson 's photograph is an outsider's vision, technically and presentationally untraditional, and seems to disregard customary narratives of the artist's role and identity, it conveys its own
implied narratives of position and production.These bear on both
the painter and the photographer and have some affinities with representations of painters that appear in the more culturally central
milieu of the nineteenth-century Shanghai art world. The artist is a
craftsman first, displaying the tools of his craft, brush and mahlstick,
in the act of practice. He is in the business of replication, most likely
of photographic images in oils, surrounded by examples of his production specialties and bysigns of the commercialization of his craft.
He is both subservient to his task of replication , and compliant to
the photographer's objectifying vision. As represented here the artist
is not unlike the image of the painter as faithful limner presented in
Qiu Ying's Spring Morning in the Han Palace handscroll, except that
the Hong Kong artist is cut off from any social relationships other
than the indirect ties of the marketplace, marked by the surrounding
disembodied images of his diverse clientele. 2
Thomson's career embodies a submerged narrative of the photographer as a purveyor of images who travels to distant cities to
make his way in the world. It is an account echoed closely,and curiously, in the life of Ren Yi (Bonian, 1840-1895 ), who moved from his
home region of Zhejiang to Suzhou and Shanghai in search of a
career.' Ren's profile Portrait of Gao Yongzhi (figure 2) similarly echoes
Thomson 's photograph of the Hong Kong painter in its profile presentation of an image of an artist; othe rwise, Ren's portrait occupies
a distant position on a contemporary grid of mediality, sociality, and
cultural space with Thomson's photograph.
Ren Yi's 1877 portrait of the twenty-eight year old painter reflects
contact with European representational modes but, unlikeThomson's
photographic image of the artist from just a few years before , it is less
a representation of artistic performance than an exemplification of
it. Functionally, it is primarily a birthday picture, but the sociality of
the image extends to its production as a collaboration between Ren
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Figure 2.
Ren Yi (1840-1895 ) and Hu
Yuan (1823-1886 ), Portrait
of Gao Yongzhi Beneath a
Tree,dated 1877- Shanghai
Museum. Hanging scroll,
ink and color on paper,
130.9 x 48.5 cm.

ART AT THE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

Yi as portraitist and Hu Yuan (1823-1886) as supplementary painter of
setting and scenery. There is a still broader social function for the
image as well; it belongs to an extensive series in Ren's cruvre that
documented, and presumably solidified, Ren's relationships with a
contemporary community of artists, including images of the painters
Hu Yuan, Gao Yong (Gao Yongzhi, 1850-19 21), Sha Fu (1831-1906 ),
Zhang Xiong (1803-1886), Ren Xun (1835-1893), Xugu (1823-1896 ), and
Wu Changshuo (1844-1927). The signs of Western pictorial impact in
the heavy shading of face and robe are counterbalanced and even
contradicted by strong traces of dynamic brush-and-ink movements
in the rendering of robe contours, pine tree, and rock, whose functions as signs of personal production, rather than reproduction, are
at least as crucial as their symbolic import.The need for such assertions of the personal and the social is only increased by the co-presence of Western representational features, and the chief impact of
the West in this context may have been as much the stimulation of
this kind of reaction as direct influence on representation, although
there is substantial evidence of Ren Yi's knowledge of Western pictorial images and techniques and of his practice of preparatory pencil
sketches in the Western manner.' Ren Yi's recorded denunciations of
Western moral culture, at any rate, are couched in reactive terms,
including a protective citation of traditional Confucian familial and
social relationships as valued and threatened.6
If one major axis of concern for images of nineteenth-century
artistic roles lay along a contemporary grid - of foreign cultural
intrusion and competition with the reproductive technology of photography - another was bound up with historical precedents and
paradigms. Some of the issues involved are addressed by the juxtaposition of related images: Ren Yi's Portrait of Wu Changshuo Enjoying
the Cool Shade of Banana Palms (figure 3), which seems to correspond
n
imost structural features with a painting of a little more than a century
before, Luo Ping's Portrait of]in Nong's Noon Nap Beneath Banana Palms
(figure 4).Theimages have in common seated figures with bared torsos
under banana palms, holding round leaf-fans; Ren Yi's knowledge of
Luo Ping' s precedent composition is documented in Ren's inscription
on another painting. There are some parallels as well in the circumstances of the portraits and relationships between artist and portrait
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SATI RE AN D SIT UAT IO N

subject. Both involve teacher-pupil relationships, though with markedly different dynamics. Luo Ping's portrayal of his teacher maintains,
on the surface at least, the more traditional portrait situation, with
the senior and prestigious sitter painted by the student who is junior
in age and status and subservient in role. Ren Yi's portrait of his slightly
younger painting student,Wu Changshuo, reverses those age and role
relationships; the status relationships are less clear . Wu Changshuo
had a reputation in calligraphic and literary accomplishment that
Ren Yi lacked, and some of Ren's recorded comments to Wu indicate
an awareness of Wu's higher status and some effort on Ren's part to
cultivate or flatter him.' In fact, the composition of Ren Yi's portrait of
Wu Changshuo beneath banana palms is almost exactly matched in
an earlier Portrait of Zhang Xiong and in an undated portrait of an
unknown subject; thus Ren's image of Wu might be seen as part of a
series that functioned as means of cultivating well-known artists and
of signaling Ren's relationship to them .'
Our awareness of Ren 's repeated uses of this portrait formula
alters our sense of its significance and its relationship to its models.
Rather than a unique reference to the portrait and the relationship of
Jin Nong and Luo Ping, it appears to be a ready patte rn, with an aura
of multiple, if not mass , production and an implication of professionalism and commercialization. The existence of multiple versions of
this painted portrait type brings up the contemporary presence of
photographic portraits as a competitive medium , whether or not
any specifically photographic qualities or impact can be discerned in
the painted portrait. In this light, Ren Yi's portrait images beneath
banana palms take on the qualities of a reproducible template.
Luo Ping's Portrait of Jin Nang is more complex than appears on
the surface. It harbors an implication of surreptitious capture of the
master by his follower in an unguarded moment , in ways that call up
the complex interdependencies of teacher and student, particularly
in the case of a student who ghost-painted for his teacher as did Luo
Ping.' Moreover, the portrayal of relaxation and casual attire carried
,even for contemporary viewers, im putations or recollections of Jin
Nong's reputation for homoerotic behavior and an aura of impropriety, far less innocuous than the first impression of an image of an
artistic demeanor and disregard of formality.
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ART ATTHE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

Figure 3. Ren Yi
( 1840-1895 ),Portraito fW u
Changshuo Enjoying the
Cool ShadeofBananaPalms.
Zhejiang Provincial
Museum, Hangzhou.
Hanging scroll, ink and
color on paper, 129.5 x
58.9 cm.

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SATIRE AND SITUATION

Figure 4. Luo Ping
(1733-1799), Portrait of]in

Nong's Noon Nap Beneath
Banana Palms, inscription
dated 1760. Shanghai
Museum . Hanging scroll,
ink and color on paper.

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ART ATTHE CLOSE OF CH I NA'S E MPIR E

Thus Ren Yi's Portrait of Wu Changshuo Enjoying the Cool Shade of
Banana Palms acquires some of its impact and significance from its
positioning against both contemporary photographic practice and
historical painting sources, irrespective of the differences in Ren's
relationships to those pictorial categories. Connections with photographic images of artists such as Thomson 's would presumably have
been resisted by Ren along with other Westernizing practices but
the status of his portrait of Wu Changshuo as one of a standardized
series nonetheless draws it into the context of photographic production and reproduction. Ren Yi's connections to Luo Ping's Portrait of
Jin Nong' s Noon Nap were more specific and deliberate, but the portrait of Wu Changshuo has a different impact from its model, in part
due to its very situation of belatedness and dependence on the earlier work, but especially because of its qualities of physicality, verging
on gross corporeality. Where Luo Ping's portrait of Jin Nong is reticent, even vaguely apparitional in its evocation of the subject's sleeping, dreaming state, Ren's portrait of Wu has an inescapably fleshy,
sensual presence.This mode of presentation distinguishes Ren's portrait both from the less visually assertive eighteenth -centur y artist
portrait and from the seeming effortlessness and disembodied character of photographic production. At the same time, the insistent
solidity and corporeality of Ren's work may owe something to the
need to compete with the vividness and verisimilitude of photographic portraits.
The effect of Ren Yi's presentation of Wu Changshuo is difficult
to characterize precisely, in part because it depends so much on the
circumstances of the image, in the ways mentioned above and also
due to its place in a larger series of portraits of other artist-friends of
Ren, and other images of Wu Changshuo in particular. In comparison
to Jin Nong' s Noon Nap, Ren's Wu Changshuo Enjoying the Shade moves
in the direction of satire, or at least a heightening of the satirical elements implicit in that earlier work to a more blatant and inescapable
level.Jin Nong's Noon Nap supports an initial reception in terms of
the sitter 's assumption of a conventional, rustic persona in an environment of relaxed retreat , although the extended implications of
the image are if anything subversive of the image of the artist as an
exemplar of high-minded refinement. Ren Yi's related portrait of Wu
Changshuo seems deliberately to cast the artist in terms of an appetitive, embodied sensuality that distances the image at the outset
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SATIRE AND SIT UAT IO N

from most of the conventional associations of cultivated artistic
identity in the Chinese portrait tradition. The invocation of Luo
Ping's precedent image of Jin Nang thus seems more a matter of
parody than paradigm.
The outspoken sense of physicality, corporeality, and embodiment that pervades so many nineteenth -century artist portraits, both
in imagistic terms and reflected in the contents of accompanying
textual inscriptions, is worth some further consideration. By and
large, earlier artist portraits rather de-emphasized thebody in pictorial
terms, with summary treatments of all but the portrait head, sometimes reflecting a technical practice of leaving the painting of heads
and bodies of portrait figures to different specialists. Most earlier
artist-portraits convey standards of formal harmony of the portrait
figure or active enjoyment of the sitter's surroundings, but there are
some examples which manifest qualities of bodily tension, distortion,
or ungainliness that foreshadow the directions of nineteenth-century
portraiture. Chen Hongshou's (1599-1652) self-portraits,with their tense
concealment or contortions embodying mental states, or Kuncan 's
(1612-1675or earlier) self-image as an alienated, tree-dwelling Chan
eccentric, or Luo Ping's image ofJin Nang as an ungainly luohan are
prominent, but unusual, cases. Whereas earlier artist-portraits of
this type embody deep-seated anxieties and alienations, thelate nineteenth-century artists, especially as they are represented by Ren Yi,
are rendered rather as appetitive and discomfited, with accompanyinginscriptions oftenconveying a tone of complaint.The critical thrust
of the portraits seems to become reflexively directed at the artist-subjects, more than at the surrounding culture.
Somefeatures of that redirection areindicated in thejuxtaposition
of another pair of portraits, Jin Nong's Self Portrait of 1760 (figure 5),
and another of Ren Yi's images of the artist Gao Yong , GaoYongzhi as a
Calligraphy Beggar (figure 6). Despite the evident similarities between
images of standing figures in profile, holding long staffs, the portraits
are separated by a wide gulf in presentation and emphasis. Jin Nong's
self-portrayal is nearly disembodied, with his long robe outlined by a
tentative line, conveying little sense of the body beneath. It is embedded
in a textual matrix of art-historical references, so thatJin Nong's present identity is further fragmented in a series of distant historical reflections and comparisons. Gao Yong, on the other hand, is portrayed
with an uneasily contained muscular intensity, tightly gripping his staff,
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ART AT THE CLOSE OF CH I NA'S EMPIRE

I
Figure 5.
Jin Nong (1687-1764),
Self Portrait:Walking with
a Staff, dated 1759. Palace
Museum , Beijing. Hanging scroll, ink on paper.

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l
120

SAT I R E AND S I T UAT IO N

his tunic billowing with dynamic folds suggestive of the energy
beneath, and with the concrete tools of artistic production at his feet.
Ren Yi's portrait of Gao Yong as a calligraphy beggar also raises
the issue of satire or parody in representation .The 1887 portrait of
Gao Yong bears a long inscription by the painter Xugu, added in the
same year at the request of artist and subject, which provides some
evidence of the contemporary climate of reception for such an image.
Moreover, because the text is based on a longer composition written
by Xugu for Wu Changshuo , it may offer some broader illumination
on questions of tone in portraits of artists as beggars or in otherwise
straitened circumstances.The inscription, translated in part, reads:
Yongzhi is a Department Magistrate and an excellent man; he is
skilled in calligraphy and partial to it, calling himself 'the calligraphy beggar.' He enjoined Ren Bonian to paint a small portrait
of him, with his hair like a bramblebush, with rent clothes and
raising an open basket in which are stored brushes and inkstones.
It conveys an extremely poverty-stricken, cramped and restrained
demeanor; seeing it makes one suddenly laugh uncontrollably.
It's only an entertainment, without having rousing qualities . I
also use an entertainment to inscribe it: ' In Wu City the pan-pipe
sound is music for a fine day; why so much trouble to study calligraphy and bear calligraphy debts? Calligraphy debts are without respect, and evading them is not easy; everywhere everyone
knows the calligraphy beggar. With wild hair and rough clothes
he captures the idea of calligraphy; carnal eyes straight forward,
not yet willing to sell ... Diligently practicing calligraphy day after
day is called a disease of immatur ity; loving one's own outlined
characters, isn't that excessive? Seeing me discuss calligraphy, heart
all at once intoxicated; the skill is itching, to take it in the fingers
and manipulate [the brush] is like scratching the itch.' 1'
Xugu's text suggests that the portrait conception was first a source
of entertainment and laughter, and his own poem is likewise a playful entertainment .The most obvious source of humor in the depiction is the contrast with Gao Yong's actual circumstances ; Gao was
by all accounts a prosperous figure, well connected and with a large
art collection.1' His portrayal as a calligraphy beggar may have been
satirical on several levels: a parody of artist s' traditionally exaggerated

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ART ATTHE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

Figure 6.
Ren Yi (1840-1895 ), Portrait
of the Painter GaoYongzhi
(1850-1921) as a Calligraphy
Beggar,dated 1887. Palace
Museum , Beijing. Hanging scroll, ink and color
on paper.

122

SATIRE AND SI1U ATI O N

Figure 7. Ren Yi
(1840 -1895), Portrait of the

Hengyun Mountain Man
(the painter Hu Yuan ) as a
Traveling Beggar, dated
1868. Central Academy of
Fine Arts, Beijing. Hanging
scroll, ink and colors on
paper, 147 x 42 cm.

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ART ATTHE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

complaints about the difficulties of their lot; a reference to Gao
Yong's obsession with calligraphy, which verges on an impoverishing
addiction, even if a cultural one; and, in a thorough reversal of traditional values, a comment on the contemporary absurdity of one
who refuses to sell his artistic product. Each of those subjects of
satire had, of course, a more serious counterpart: the relentlessly
commercial environment for artistic production in late nineteenthcentury Shanghai; the genuine financial pressures faced by many
artists, at least episodically; and the widespread addiction to opium
which claimed Ren Yi among itsvictims.This image had a considerably
earlier precedent in Ren Yi's related profile portrait, dated 1868, of his
friend and painting collaborator Hu Yuan as a beggar (figure 7)."
Since Hu was also a prosperous painter well-connected to banking
circles in Shanghai, some satirical intent also seems likely, although
the early portrait may have reflected some genuine distress having
to do with Hu's repeated examination failures. • 1 The later beggarportrait, of Gao Yong, moves in the direction of a more pronounced
physicality; by the late 1880s, a commitment to art is cast primarily
in terms of an appetite .
The taste for satire was well-established in the nineteenth-century literary sphere, following the rise of the genre in the previous century. 1' Some of the most acute observations of pervasive corruption
in late nineteenth-century society appears in the writings of Wu
Woyao (1866-19rn), whose vignettes oflate Qing urban life focus on
events in Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, and Tianjin around the time of
Ren Yi's late career, from the mid 1880s to the late 1890s.' 1 His stories
are populated by officials, scholars, merchants, courtesans, and artists,
involved with themes of bribery, swindle, sexual infatuation , and
opium addiction. Stories of forgery and venality among artists and
art dealers are especially relevant to our understanding of the context
oflate Qing portraiture, and some artists active in Shanghai are mentioned by name, including Ren Xiong's son Ren Yu (1854-190)1, and
Ren Yi's collaborator Hu Yuan.19 Poorly educated poets who pass themselves off as painters in newspaper advertisements and who farm out
paintings to professional artists for profit, sometimes mismatching
recycled poems to inappropriate paintings , are one subject of Wu's
ridicule.20 This type calls to mind the professional painter of reproductions documented in Thomson's photograph. The predilection

124

SATIR E AN D S11U ATI O N

of salt-merchant collectors of antiques for damaged works and notable
seals, making them easy targets for forgery and fraud, is another subject of satire.21 The high prices paid for portrait paintings in contrast to
other genres such as flowers and birds is mentioned in another
vignette, shedding some further light on motivations for the popularity of the genre in the nineteenth centu ry. And contemporary artists
active in Shanghai are criticized for their notoriously bad char- acter,
ranging from the outright chicanery , opium addiction, and
boastfulness of the portraitist Ren Yu, to the excessive money-consciousness of Hu Yuan. Ren Yi's portrait of Hu Yuan as a beggar dates
from a couple ofdecades before the timeWu Woyao waswriting about
, but our sense of the sincerity of that pictorial persona is influenced
by those later literary characterizations.
The case of Hu Yuan points up the importance of situation and
circumstance for understanding the tone and significance of imagery.
Satire and parody depend on some stable foil - norms of value, morality, and behavior - to play against for full effect.The situation oflate
nineteenth-century China, and especially of sites of immigration,
economic dynamism, and multiculturalismsuch as Shanghai , offered
a rich urban spectacle of diverse social behaviors and mores, but very
little stability, and thus satire and ridicule are often double-edged , and
often reflexively self-directed.The roles of official, scholar, artist, and
merchant had at least a long-term, culturally well-established set of
values and expectations attached to them, however , and it is no accident that these types are so important in Wu Woyao's satirical vignettes. Some of those roles figure prominently in another of Ren Yi's
portraits of Wu Changshuo , his Portrait of the Poverty-Stricken Official of
1888 (figure 8).Wu'spoem andintroduction on thesubject ofthe painting make it clear that his roles were the occasion for self-ridicule:
22

23

I sought [Ren] Bonian to depict this portrait image, titling it Portrait of the Poverty-Stricken Official. Wearing a summer hat, clothed
in thin silk ceremonial long gown, uprightly standing with hands
folded in a bow of greeting, his appearance can be sneered at.
Those who are well acquainted with me will all point to it saying:
'This indeed is Wu Kutie (Changshuo).' I accordingly inscribed a
poem to describe its intent , and in order to ridicule myself:

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ART ATTHE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

-

:i
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Figure 8. Ren Yi
(1840-1895), Portrait of

Wu Changshuo as a
Poverty-StrickenOfficial,
dated 1888. Zhejiang
Provincial Museum,
Hangzhou. Hanging
scroll, ink and color on
paper, 164.2 x 77,6 cm.

..

126

SATIRE AND S I1U ATIO N

Prominent officials dwell in the official hall;
minor government servants walk in the summer heat.
Putting on the official's belt, hastening to the outside gate of the
yamen (public office and official residence);
during the hottest days ofJune, sweat falls like rain.
Summoned with a call, only then does one dare enter;
mind and spirit are first fainthearted, and stop.
Asked to reveal what I have seen; wanting to answer, but afraid
of provoking disputes.
Self-conscious of my poverty-stricken intellectual's demeanor;
fearing to infuriate the great prefectural official.
Timorously forced to prevarications;
respectfully hang my hands and hunch my body in a bow...
In depicting this what was his (Ren Yi's) purpose?
He pitied my government-servant'sfeelings of bitter sorrow...
Following the multitude, compel myself to hasten; hang
my head and yield to classes and groups...
Brushing away dust on the wall and hanging my portrait;
drink to it with weak spirits and strained wine.
Facing the shadow-image and draining the goblet countless
times; immovable - I myself am guest and host at once.
For the time being make the intoxicated military official look;
grasp the cup - you sir, and you!"
Wu Changshuo's poetic self-ridicule, and the related portrait
image, are remarkable in being self-instigated. Still more noteworthy is the possibility that the image was, in effect, an imaginative
forecasting of indignities and complaints he had not yet experienced
as an official, as Shan Guolin's research woula suggest. In that case,
the poem and painting would have involved a kind of double-level
satire: self-ridicule of Wu Changshuo 's official ambitions, and an
exposure of the degraded lot of office-holders in the late Qing. Both
poem and portrait painting suggest the gulf between emblem and
actuality. Wu is portrayed wearing his emblems of rank uncomfortably and a bit absurdly, and they are described as a sweat-producing
burden . The painted portrait embodies a direct counterpart of the
poetic self-ridicule, in the self-confrontation with the portrait image
hung on the wall described at the end of Wu's poem. This portrayal
may have taken, as a point of departure and contrast, another image
25

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ART AT THE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

Figure 9. Ren Xiong
(1823-185)7, Self Portrait.
Palace Museum, Beijing .
Hanging scroll, ink and
color on paper,177x79cm.

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SATIRE AN D S 11U ATIO N

of self-confrontation: Ren Xio ng's monumental Self Portrait (figure 9)
from about three decades earlier. Despite the vast differences in tone
and impact between the two portraits , they share some unusual
structural and presentational features that suggest a possible intended reference to the earlier work. Both portraits are of impressive
size, dominated by a purely frontal figure, standing in striking isolation without any indication of setting or background. Both figures
clasp their hands in front of their torsos and are shown with feet
splayed apart, legs separated byfirm vertical folds of cloth . Ren Xio ng's
confrontation was with his image in a mirror, as noted in his bold
inscription, and his self-portrayal is the paradigm of physical embodiment in nineteenth-century portraiture. Despite the angry, muscular presence of his self-portrait, however, the inscription reveals him
beset with anxieties and doubts:
In the vast world -what lies before my eyes? I smile and bow and
go around flattering people [in hope of] extending connections,
but aware of what affairs? In the great confusion, what is there to
hold on to and rely on? ...What is more pitiful is that even though
the mirror [shows J my black eyebrows exchanged [for white J an
d
worldly dust covering my white head, I am still completely like a
racingsteed without plans. What iseven more of a pitiable impediment is that the historians have not recorded even a single, light
word about me... [But] who is the ignorant one?Who is the virtuous sage? I already am completely without any idea. In the flash
of a glance, all I can see is a boundless void.2•
The political and social circumstances that engendered Ren Xiong's
anxieties were not unrelated to the sources of Wu Changshuo 's dissatisfactions . However, just as Wu Changshuo 's frontal figure is pictorially diminished in comparison to Ren Xiong 's, pushed farther
back in space and smaller in scale, folded in on himself rather than
aggressively confronting his uncertainties as does Ren Xiong's selfimage, so Wu's complaints over poverty and discomfort seem diminished in comparison to the scale of Ren Xio ng's elemental confusions
about his place in the world and in history.
If Ren Xiong retained existential uncertainties about his position
in the world, Ren Yi seems to have been content with the diminished role he formulated in his portrait images of other artists. Ren
Yi's inscription at the lower left of his Three Friends group portrait
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SATIRE AND S11U AT I O N

hanging scroll of1884 (figure IO) records his satisfaction at being invited to join his patrons in the depiction : '[Zhu] Jintang and [Zeng]
Fengji, the two sirs, charged me to sketch their portraits, and moreover allowed me to sit among them, calling it The Three Friends - fortunate indeed, fortunate indeed.' Ren's rather fawning pleasure at
being invited to join his subjects masks a fundamental irony of his
situation : the artist is raised to a position of at least conditional social
equality with his sitters (albeit with calculations of position and status carefully maintained ), but he (and his self-portrait image) also
becomes, among the piles of paintings owned by his host, the collector/fan shop ownerZhuJintang, an object on display, not so different
from the array of images for sale and reproduction in the studio of
Thomson's artist at work (figure 1).
27

Figure 10.
Ren Yi (1840 -1895),Three
Friends- Self Portrait
with Zeng Fengji and Zhu
Jintang , dated 1884.

Palace Museum, Beijing.
Hanging scroll, ink and
color on paper.

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ART AT THE CLOSE OF CHINA'S EMPIRE

Notes
1. SeeJohnThomson,ChinaandltsPeopleinEarlyPhotographs:AnUnabridged

Reprint of the Classic 1873-74 (New York, 1982 ) , 1: Plate 4. See also Richard
Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self: Chinese Portraits - 1600 -1900 (New York,
1992 ), 141-142.
2. See Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, colorplate 4 and pages 15-16 for Qiu

Ying's painting.
3. For a recent discussion of Ren Yi's biography, see Hans van der Meyden,
'The Life and Works of Ren Bonian (1840-1896 ): An Attempt to Strip the
Artist 's Biography of Some Apocryphal Fabrications ,' Oriental Art,
XXXV III, number l (Spring 1992 ), 27-40.
4. For reproductions and discussions of several of these port raits, see
Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 130-155.
5. See Ding Xiyuan, Ren Bonian (Shanghai , 1989), nianpu,43-44; also the discussion in van der Meyden, 'The Life and Works of Ren Bonian,' 33-34.
6. Discussed and translated in Claudia Brown andJu-hsi Chou, Transcending Turmoil: Painting at the Close of China's Empire 1796-1911(Phoenix,
1992 ), 181-182.
7- See Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 132.
8 . See Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 132.
9 . Reproduced and discussed in Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 132-135 ,

figures 67 and 68 .
the extended discussion of this painting in Vinograd , Boundaries of
the Self, 92 -100 .
11. Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, colorplates 6 and 8, and figures 32 and 60.
12. Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, n 6-n 8 .
13. Ding, Ren Bonian, nianpu, 82-83.
14. Brown and Chou,Transcending Turmoil, 179-180.
15. Vinograd, Boundaries of the Self, 146-149 , figure 78.
16. Brown and Chou, Transcending Turmoil, 126 -128 , 179 -180.
17. See Timothy C.Wong, Wu Ching-tzu (Boston , 1978); and Margery C.
Anneberg, 'The Chinese Novel of the Nineteenth Century and Late
Ch'ing Period: A Short Literary and Social History with Special Reference to the Kuan-ch'ang hsien-hsing chi' ( MAThesis: University of Washington , 1952).
18. Michael Wai-mai Lau,Wu Woyao (1866 -1910): AWriterof Fiction of the Late
Ch'ing Period, (PhD dissertation: Harvard University, 1968 ).
IO. See

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19. See the translation ofWu Woyao's vignettes by Shih Shun Liu, Vignettes

from the Late Ch'ing: Bizarre Happenings Eyewitnessed over Two Decades
(Hong Kong , 1975 ).
20. Liu,Vignettes from the Late Ch'ing, 36.
21. Liu, Vignettes from the Late Ch' ing, 199-201.
22. Liu, Vignettes from the Late Ch'ing ,168.
23. Liu, Vignettes.from the Late Ch'ing, 168-170. See also Brown and Chou,
Transcending Turmoil, 193-194.
24. A Chinese transcription of the poem and inscription appear in Ding, Ren
Bonian , nianpu, 91-92. The long poetic inscription visible on the main
body of the painting to the viewer's left of the figure ofWu Changshuo is
by his and Ren Yi's contemporary Yang Xian (1819-1896).
25. See Shan Guolin and others, editors, Haishang Minghuajia]ingpin]i
(Masterworks of Shanghai School Painters from the Shanghai Museum
Collection) (Hong Kong , 1991 ), 306; for another account of Wu's official
service during Ren Yi's lifetime, see van der Meyden, 'The Life and
Works of Ren Bonian ,' 34.
26. See Vinograd , Boundaries of the Self, 128-130 for a full rendering and discussion of this inscription and portrait.
27. See the text in Ding, Ren Bonian,nianpu,62; also thediscussion inVinograd,
Boundaries of the Self,143-144, figure 74.

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