Art from China’s Empress Dowager
Exhibition aims to show China’s Empress Dowager as arts patron
Ruler was an artist and an art patron, claims US museum.
SANTA ANA: For over a century, she was known as the woman behind the throne, whose skill and circumstance raised her from lowly consort to iron-fisted ruler at a time and place where women were though to have no power at all.
But it turns out Empress Dowager Cixi was more than that.
The 19th century ruler, who consolidated her authority at times with imprisonment and assassination, was also a great arts patron and artist with a discerning sense of taste that set the style for Asian art for more than a century.
This side of Cixi comes to the Western world for the first time with yesterday’s unveiling of “Empress Dowager, Cixi: Selections From the Summer Palace” at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
The wide-ranging collection, never before seen outside China, will remain at the Southern California museum through March 11 before returning to Beijing.
Consisting of more than 100 pieces from the lavish Beijing palace Cixi called home, “Empress Dowager” includes ornate and intricate Chinese furniture, porcelain pieces, stone carvings and Western artefacts, rare in China at the time, that she also collected.
Among them are a large oil-oncanvas portrait of herself that she commissioned the prominent Dutch artist Hubert Vos to create.
Other Western pieces include gifts from dignitaries, including British silver serving sets, German and Swiss clocks, a marble-topped table from Italy and even an American-built luxury automobile.
The 1901 Duryea tourer is believed to be the first automobile in China and thus may have been involved in the country’s first automobile accident when Cixi’s driver is said to have hit a pedestrian.
“We already have a lot of scholarship on who she is, but this show brings a different angle to her,” said curator Peng Ying Chen, as she led a recent pre-opening tour.
“The exhibit seeks to introduce her as an arts patron, an architect, and a designer,” the American University art historian said.
Anne Shih, who chairs the museum’s board of directors, noted that she spent a decade trying to persuade Beijing to lend Cixi’s art.
The Bowers has built an impressive reputation by hosting exhibitions of priceless, historical, often larger-than-life artworks from Tibet, the Silk Road, the tomb of China’s first emperor and other historic sites.
However, Shih says Chinese officials initially turned her down, telling her the empress was too controversial, having not always been portrayed in a good light.
Shih finally prevailed, however, when she emphasised the show would focus on art, not politics.
It is, however, still obvious what a formidable presence Cixi was as visitors enter a recreation of her throne room to be greeted by a large portrait of her wearing jewels and razor-sharp fingernail protectors, glaring omniously.
But nearby objects quickly make her passion for art clear.
Most prominent is a towering calligraphy piece embossed on a sheet of paper 2m tall that Cixi supposedly made with a large heavy brush while standing on a stool.
Nearby are ink-and-paper drawings of flowers the empress also created, although Peng notes Cixi was much better at calligraphy.
Placed into the emperor’s harem as a low-level teenage consort, she quickly elevated her status by giving birth to his only son in 1856.
When the emperor died six years later, she installed the boy as his successor and ran the country herself for the next 43 years. She died in 1908 at age 72.
Though she led China through many wars against foreign invaders, she also found time to pursue her own passion for art.
Her real artistic skill, however, lay in envisioning works that would stand the critical test of time.
“Her personal preference actually led to the further development of these ornate designs,” Peng said, observing intricately carved goldinlaid furniture and painted porcelain pieces
“Nowadays when you go to antique shops, you can see quite a few pieces in this style. You can say she was a trendsetter.”