Introduction

Infinite Beauty—Literature and Female Images in Figure Paintings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties

Looking down, they come with an agreeable smile—
Gentle, tender, give birth to a new being, make a harmonious and orderly home;
They come here with their horses and swords—
Wisdom, perseverance, valiant, women are in no way inferior to men;
Walking with a light step, they come here in fairy clothes—
Holy, loving, the spiritual harbor of the lost souls;
They ride the winds and break the waves to come here—
Proud and solitary, free and enthusiastic, living up to the true self, peerless and independent…
 

Infinite beauty, beauties are infinite. In the inheritance and development of figure paintings in the Ming and Qing dynasties, many famous or unknown masters of traditional Chinese painting, from making classical allusions to viewing Chinese learning as substance, western learning for application, from pen and ink portrayal to a vivid touch, recorded lifelike female images and their soul-stirring literary stories in history. Today, they meet us after shaking off hundreds of years of established rules of secular society... Perhaps, inside and outside the frames, brand-new life and significance is made possible for them when we look at the women face to face.