Commemorative Album for Lady Danxiang (Ge Xiuying)

This touching collection consists of a portrait and numerous colophons dedicated to the life and tragic early death of a young woman in late 18th century China. The calligraphy is in clerical script; its formal and archaic quality corresponds to the poem’s function as a eulogy.

Gě Xiùyīng 葛秀英 was the wife of a scholar named Qín Aò 秦鏊. The couple was associated with many of the leading cultural figures of their day, who considered them to be living embodiments of the stereotypical ideal couple who combined “talents plus beauty” (cáizǐ jiārén 才子佳人). After Gě’s untimely death at age nineteen, her grief-stricken husband commissioned a portrait and requested poems and essays from friends to make this album in her memory, a moving testament of his love.

Atypical of the idealized images of women from the period, this painting portrays Gě in plain scholar’s robes, holding a writing brush in her hand, with a distant, melancholy facial expression. This sense of remoteness is enhanced by use of the compositional device of framing her as if seen through a window.