Portrait of Pan Qintai

Zeng Jing (Tseng Ching)China, Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)

University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, United States

Details

Title: Portrait of Pan Qintai
Creator: Zeng Jing (Tseng Ching)
Creator Lifespan: 1564/1657
Creator Nationality: Chinese
Creator Gender: Male
Date Created: China, Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Location: China
Physical Dimensions: w58.5 x h116.6 (image)
Label Copy: Inscription: On a winter day in 1621, during the Tianji era, Zeng Jing painted [this] for Mr. Qintai. Two seals of the artist. Seven colophons, with accompanying seals, of contemporary scholars and artists. In 1621, Zeng Jing, the most famous portrait painter in Chinese history, completed this portrait of Pan Qintai, a scholar from Suzhou admired by many seventeenth-century contemporaries, as their numerous inscriptions reveal. Unlike the typical works of figure painters of the period, the facial features are individualized, presumably the result of the artist's studied observation. Some art historians believe that Zeng Jing may have been influenced by exposure to Western portraiture that had been imported into China in the sixteenth century by Italian Jesuits. Although portraiture had a place in Chinese art at least as far back as the second century, it lacked the status of landscape painting. One man - the artist of this painting, Zeng Jing - did more than any other figure in history to elevate the status of portraiture. His works were the first to persuasively capture both the contours of an individual face as well as an elusive sense of the sitter's interior life. Zeng Jing used delicately drawn light lines and subtle washes - near transparent layers of color - to define the features of the subject, Pan Qintai, a scholar from Suzhou, for whom this portrait was made.The many inscriptions on the painting are words of praise for Pan by his contemporaries and admirers and further define the sitter's character, complementing the visual portrait with verbal tributes to his interests and nature. In describing his cultivation and way of life as an educated man, they honor the literary and artistic ideals and values of the time. However, the presence of these inscriptions by famous scholar-artists equally attest to their regard for the painter. One of colophons composed by Che'en Chi-ju (1558-1639) reads: Mr. P'an, remote, is full of solitude. Never seeking wealth, he is always content. His heart is still like water, his body lean as arid wood. He wears white cotton robes and dwells in a yellow thatched hut. His mind is peaceful and relaxed, his sleep deep and sound. He owns a thousand books as well as a ch'in (zither). His fine sons and grandsons are amiable and filial.
Type: Painting
External Link: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1966-sl-1.110/1966_1.110.JPG?lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;resnum=1;sel9=ic_exact;size=20;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=musart_an;select1=starts;q1=1966%2F1.110
Medium: hanging scroll, ink and color on paper

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